The Waiting Game

It's Monday and I am feeling the pressure of my weekly deadline, which is at 5 p.m. Tuesday. I have six stories and two photo package assignments i am working on this week. The problem is I only have one of them completed and two near completion. i have placed so many calls and am waiting for return calls. Interviews have been scheduled for tomorrow. Now I am just playing the waiting game for my final needed bits of information to slowly make their way to my notepad. It's going to be a frantic race to the finish line after that.

This is the part of my job that really frustrates me: the days where I have so much on my plate so I can't take anything else on, yet I feel like i am accomplishing nothing. This morning was mostly productive, but this afternoon is dragging by.

I worry that I am heading towards burnout at work. I feel so much pressure at work as I am still the only reporter and pretty much the only producer of news copy. With this week's stories getting written at such a slow pace, I feel extra burdened. I worry about there not being enough copy to fill the newspaper pages. I just can't do much else that I'm not already doing to speed up the process.

A little guiltily, I am here writing in copyworks to later post on my blog. One more hour...then I can go unwind in Waukesha by taking pictures of birds, insects and flowers at the Retzer Nature Center. The time can't go fast enough. My fear is always, though, that the Freeman will call me and I will have to ignore my stories in order to cover breaking news. I love covering breaking news. The adrenaline rush is fabulous. The only problem is then I am not working on my required news stories.

I am just counting down the days until my three-day weekend at the end of the month!

Quote:
“If something anticipated arrives too late it finds us numb, wrung out from waiting, and we feel nothing at all. The best things arrive on time.”
--Dorothy Gilman, A New Kind of Country, 1978