'HOW YOUR HALO FELL'

Like shoveling coal into a furnace.

That's what life has become -- a maze of mind-sapping routines that refreshes every day, adding to a mounting deficit as committments clash and rest proves elusive. But fortunately, work has provided a great creative outlet for my frustrations. If it weren't for the Sun Journal, the 20k circulation community newspaper where I serve as weekends reporter, I doubt there would be much variety in my life.

Reporting is awesome. To swipe a Peace Corps recruitment slogan, "It's the toughest job you'll ever love."

Love. Now there's a word I've been avoiding for some time. And, if the past serves as a fair barometer of the future, things aren't due for a change anytime soon. But you have to keep hope alive, or so they say.

One of my closest and most loyal friends lost her job today. With a department full of bumbling incompetents as superiors, it's no great loss to her in the long run, but I'm sure it still stings. The fascination with modelling as a viable career choice is beginning to concern me. Men are pigs, and fashion photographers are pigs with telephoto lenses. It's a cruel, bottom-line driven industry, and I disagree with the philosophy that a person, no matter how attractive, should be a model for others to emulate.

More is on the way. I'd like to post a more complete update, but since this is the first post in months, I'm not too ambitious about stretching the word count.

"DeLorean/Those days are gone/ This may feel so distant/ Feels like a million miles/ Trouble was nonexistent/ 1985"
1985, Roper