I cannot remember what I liked about journalism.Sometimes I think I'd rather sit catatonically staring at a blank computer screen for eight hours a day than pick up a phone to call a source. When I do make phone calls, which is not often, I have to coax myself through the process. Rethink my questions, write out a script and try to not let the nausea overcome me.
I'm not sure when it changed, or when even thinking about the news made me want to vomit. I have a physical reaction to reporting. Its effect on my mental stability is jarring.
I'm exhausted and I lack focus. I burst into tears at random. I procrastinate until the very last second. I go to the restroom at least 30 times a day just to prevent atrophy. I daydream about sleep and even death. I fancy what throwing myself into a metro train would do for the news. Even though it happens at least once a year here. Maybe I should have noticed this pattern when Marjon and I wanted to drown ourselves in the Concho River. We thought it was San Angelo, and maybe for her it was, but for me it's this atrocious career choice called journalism.
I even envied a plant duster in our building's lobby. She was a young woman wearing purple shorts and a utility belt with clunky white tennis shoes. Blond haired tied in a messy ponytail. Not even her frumpy uniform was enough to dissuade me. I didn't ask or verify because I hate asking questions. It looked as if her job was to dust plants in lobbies and offices across the city. At least it's what I romanticized it was. What I'd give to have that job -- walking all over Downtown D.C. dusting plants. No responsibility, no pressure, no deadlines, no computer, no insanity. Yes, I'd rather dust plants than report the news.
I didn't even want to look at my byline when it finally went up on the wire. It wasn't even my story once it ran. They should have just added "TL contributed to the reporting of this story" along with the contact information. I read it once and only once. I couldn't bear to reread.
I wonder what conditioning I was subjected to in order to shudder in fear and disgust at the news process. Maybe it was watching the entire photography staff walk out and quit on production night. Maybe it was feeling ridiculed by the quality of the paper I was responsible for, and being singled out in class for the same reason. Someone even said it was the shittiest college newspaper they had ever read. And he had read a lot, he said.
My eyes were pried open as I sat hunched over for an entire semester of people slinging bullshit at me. Instead of violent rape scenes, the projector in front of me was cut with scenes of All The President's Men, printing presses, pens, notebooks, and microphones; the sound of camera shutters, answering machines, and the clicking of keyboards. Even images of those cute little paperboys with oversized hats make me gag.
I wonder if Pavlov ever poisoned any of his dogs. Being editor in chief was my food poisoning. I can't go near the news without being instantly debilitated into a pile of mush.
The Ludovico Technique has worked on me. I am ready to be back in society as a person, a student, a bum, a slacker, a bitch, a lover, a mistress, a mistake, a human, a writer, a typist, a paper cutter, a delivery girl, a clothes folder, a plant duster, as anything. ANYTHING. Just for god's sake, please, not a news reporter.
