Hanging by a thread

It's amazing how sometimes a single aspect of your life can decide how your day will be. To get more specific, I finished work real early today. It wasn't really because I performed exceptionally well or anything. It was merely because the ad department saved the day, bless their hearts. I was going at a pleasant rate anyway. The correspondents seemed not to be in a real mood to file stories, so for once I was actually able to stop typing at times and look around at the world, such as it existed within the newsroom. Usually you are so hard-pressed for time and the work keeps piling on that towards the end you even seem to almost stop breathing. It's amazing - that's the only way I can describe the nature of my work at this point.

But today everything seemed to be going right. In fact, it has been going this way for some time now. But today was like almost unreal. As I mentioned, not only was I keeping pace with the stories that were coming in, but the ad department too decided to pitch in and send me cruising. My news editor told me I had about half a page of ads but even he was surprised when I took him the page at 10 pm, an unusual time for the particular page I was doing. The tone of the exclamation he made when he saw the amount of ads seemed to indicate that if only he had realised it a bit earlier he might have made some move to get some ads cancelled. I shuddered within me and almost grabbed the page away from him, but held back. When I took it back, I did it almost unnaturally slow and deliberate, he must have surely noticed. I walked away too with slow deliberate steps and once out of his sight didn't look back.

It was on the way back that I realised, beaming to myself, how much my life had begun to hang on my daily grapple with work. It had become literally that - a grapple. I have actually begun counting the number of days I have until my next day off. And I used to be a work horse of sorts. At least at the workplace. But this new job, it had become a bit of a strain, and still is. The last few days have been pretty good, all because things are fine on the job front. It's sad but true. Hey but I started off this piece in a positive mood so I'm not going to ruin it in this depressive philophical strain. So like the positive guy that I am, or am constantly aspiring to be, let me hope this roll I'm on at the moment does not hit any of those huge rude speedbreakers. I could do without the rollercoaster - for now.