Tuesday, March 30, 2004

I got a reminder yesterday that I hold myself to a very high standard. (Subtext: I beat myself up all the time.) Something good happened to a friend of mine, and when he put it in context to show me how good it was, I realized that I really am pretty stupid in what I complain about.

Things aren't bad at all.

Also, I think of myself as not religious but spiritual, but it occurs to me that it's been a long time since I've had anything that could be called a "spiritual moment". Of course, they usually happen outdoors and I live in upstate New York when I'm not in Vermont, so that's probably all there is to it.

Monday, March 29, 2004

When I read this and I got to the second-to-last paragraph, I got the glimmers of an strong insight. It was something to do with the futility of predicting the future, and/or how this political season seems so unprecedented and unpredictable that it looks like it could lead to another party realignment. But I'm too busy and distracted to think about it now, to follow those glimmers all the way to the insight. Can anyone else do that? I'll award 50 points to someone who follows the train of thought from Pollack's summary of the problems with Nader to an important epiphany about the nature of American politics, the Democratic party, or something similar.

Why am I so busy? Well, writing stories for the April Fool's issue is a lot of fun. I'm definitely going to be wearing a big shit-eating grin all day Thursday at the people I'll have mocked and/or made laugh out loud. But everything in the CT has to be changed to fit the theme or at least to be funny, and that's a fair amount of work. You never notice how much you take the template for granted until you try to make every single damn thing in it a joke.

And there's more. There's the regular issue on the way, though that seems (seems) like it should (should) be unusually easy. And I have a homework assignment due Tuesday morning. And I agreed to write an Editorial Observer. It was either that or write up the Ed Board, since I'm now on the group that speaks for the opinion of the CT and it's my turn to write one. *Sigh*... and I had been so happy about this week looking easy, too. Hah. So, does anyone have any ideas about what I could write an editorial about? Bonus points for something that actually has to do with UR, instead of my boring and overcomplicated political opinions. So far I've got "Why I agree with Rob Clemm"... any other ideas?

Dammit. Since I couldn't go to the gym Saturday morning or this morning, I really should go Monday morning, right? But there's no way I'll have time for it around class, the nap I'd need if I do go, and all my work. Oh well... Tuesday morning before class, I swear! :)

Bleh. Just read G's Livejournal. Bad idea. The "Music: La Musica di Notte" note was a fleeting hope that there would be some nostalgic memories there, but it was squashed right away by stupid shit. I don't need to hear about her sex life, and calling herself a Goth is obviously false so sounds like childish posing to me, and even though I'm sure there's more to it the whole "throwing away a joint" story sounds pretty self-righteous to me, and dammit, why does she get to be so happy? Why can't I be so happy and at peace with someone else and - especially - with myself?

There's actually very little emotional intensity in all that, so it's more because I felt like stream-of-consciousness writing than it is angry or sad venting. But still, it's not sunshine and kittens either. I'm wondering if I should break ties with her even further. No, it probably wouldn't matter; if this sets me off - and it barely does, really; as I said, I'm writing about this just because I'm in the writing mood - then anything at all equally cheerful would. And avoiding cheerfulness is not generally considered good, duh.

I noticed something while writing: I complain that hope of a nostalgic memory was squashed, but then she goes on to mention wings, and I'm 90% certain that she's talking about a pair I bought her at a Renaissance Fair one time. And again, the most annoying thing of it all to me is G expressing a childish, innocent joy in something, anything at all. Further proof, not that any is needed, that my problems are very much in my head rather than caused by anyone or anything else. Dammit.

Well, to end on a positive note: keeping busy (assuming I'm not so busy that I'm sleep deprived or beating myself up emotionally for not working hard enough) is definitely good for my mood. Feeling important, actually to some slight extent being important, doing stuff that's fun or necessary rather than just killing time, not having time to stop and dwell on my problems... it's all very, very nice. Once in a while I complain to myself about becoming some workaholic who doesn't even notice his life passing him by because he spends it at the office. Hah - just goes to show I'll worry about anything at all.

Sunday, March 28, 2004

Sandal weather

has

begun.

This weekend has been fun. Not as productive as I would have liked, maybe. I had planned to be good and go to the gym both yesterday morning and today, but yesterday morning something else came up and this morning I was up later than I had planned. But then, there's not a day goes by I can say was perfectly "productive". And I did get some stuff done. I started on an April Fool's Day article, I almost caught up on my Arabic work (except for a couple worksheets that have English-to-Arabic parts, which is much harder than the reverse), and it's not even noon on Sunday yet.

And I had fun. Friday night Alissa invited me to go see this audience participation comedy act at a bar called Cocktail's to support a friend of a friend of hers, who was producing it. That was funny.

Saturday morning I was kind of depressed, for a stupid reason. I had finally talked myself into going to the gym before breakfast, but Alexa IMed me and suggested we go for a walk. It was too cold and wet for us to want to go far, so we turned around and just got big lunches from the Pit. Yeah, pretty much the exact opposite of the healthy morning I had planned. But I'm not complaining - I got to catch up with Alexa. We're good friends, but for no apparent reason we see very little of each other. I had a pretty lazy afternoon, but eventually I got around to getting to work and I did the Arabic and started the April Fool's Day story I mentioned. And then I got a call from Kim and Jamie, inviting me to go to the Spot (I don't know, some coffee shop in town) with them. Nice place. After I got back I hung out with Brian a bit.

Now... off to the CT office to try to put together an April Fool's Day issue. Three pages in three hours - hah!

Thursday, March 25, 2004

My quotes on the CT quote board, in no order except for vertical:

"You're a fucking useless idiot." -Cyrus to Brian

"We have to show this to Richard Tipton." -Cyrus
"Yes, but nowhere does it show him with his clothes off, so what's the point?" -Alissa

"You should ask Chad first. D'oh! I sound like Lewis!" -Cyrus

"Hi, I'm Cyrus - the news editor. Can I get some sexy text?" -Cyrus to Kim
"Dude, that sounded like a pick-up line!" -Michael

"He always wears chain mail." -Alissa
"That's why you kick him in the nuts!" -Cyrus

"Brielle said she'd have the article in by Sunday. I'm trying to think of phrases that would make me happier, but they all involve oral sex." -Cyrus

"What's the jumpword on the pipes story?" -Cyrus
"Pipes." -Sandeep and Lewis

And that's not even counting several quotes about me, but not by me. I think it's very strange that anyone would say some of those things in those situations, let alone me.

Wednesday, March 24, 2004

Apparently I look like either Elvis Costello, or the food guy on "Queer Eye". Is this good?

Monday, March 22, 2004

Well, work is coming along. It's not doing as well as I had hoped, but it's doing something. The amount I'd hoped to finish over the weekend was sort of ambitious, but I can finish it tonight. (Or at least the important parts of it. I don't need to be completely and totally caught up on my Arabic worksheets. I've done about half, that's enough for the moment.) If I just make some of my calls for the affirmative action story and do the two remaining short story critiques tonight, I can spend every free minute tomorrow working on the philosophy exam and writing up my story - which WILL be done by noon on Wednesday if not before, dammit! And that, in turn, would give me big parts of Wednesday and Thursday morning to finish the exam. Cutting it close, yes, but not as much as I did last week at least. And hey, it doesn't look that hard.

Of course, saying "it doesn't look that hard" about a test is roughly the equivalent of saying "I think it's finally working" about the printer or "I hope it won't rain" on vacation or "I'll be right back" in a horror movie. Shit!

Sunday, March 21, 2004

People are fucking stupid about the 1st Amendment. There’s no constitutional duty to say anything, and the amendment only says that the government can’t censor someone – it does not stop any kind of censorship from being a condition of sponsorship or employment. Sure, it would be nice, in some mythical fairy-tale perfect world, if you really could say anything you wanted anywhere you wanted. But anyone who doesn't understand why mainstream newspapers can't or shouldn't print offensive opinions, or even certain offensive facts, has a three-year-old's grasp of reality.
Today is a day for catching up on work. I've already finished the two short story critiques that were late, now I just need to do the three that are due on Thursday. Well, now that I think of it, the teacher won't be there that day so we in the class are basically just on our own... NO! No, I'll get them done on time for once. I WILL catch up! Oh, and there's also a stack of Arabic worksheets I should do.

Damn webmail. Its being down is severely handicapping my work.

Last night we - me, Eric, Kenny, Katye, and a girl named Kelly (or Cowbell, as Kenny calls her for some reason) watched Moulin Rouge in Eric's room. That was an extremely fucking weird movie. I'd like to watch it while drunk or stoned some time. With the flashy colors and quick cutscenes and romantic songs made up of lines from a few dozen classic and/or popular love songs (never mind the fact that the movie is set in 1899), it's almost exciting as a decent action movie, which is a very high accomplishment for a movie about a love triangle. Anyone who goes in for that whole "love conquers all" horseshit will love it. And no, I'm not bitter at all, thanks for asking. :) Seriously though, it was a good movie.

Thursday, March 18, 2004

I've been pretty depressed today, partly for what I'd say is a good reason (I completely and totally bombed a test, which was at least theoretically avoidable), and for a bad reason (it appears that some people in my Advanced Creative Writing class are more motivated and/or skilled than me, that must mean I'll be a miserable failure as a writer for the rest of my life, waaah). However, I'm smart enough (barely :)) to realize that being without sleep, as I am right now, always makes my mood shitty. So I will carefully avoid deep thought and introspection until I've had 12 hours of sleep. Which I would not be surprised if it happened all in one sitting.

The CT was pretty good this week, except for a single glaring error (that I know of so far, but come on, there can't be that many) I personally caused. Lesson Learned This Week: If an article needs padding, an info box should be the absolute last fucking resort. It's never as useful as more quotes would be, if they can be got, and when we create an info box at 3 a.m. it is way too easy to screw them up majorly like we did this time.

Also, a credit card I applied for came in the mail. If you wonder why this is worth mentioning - it's my first. I've probably sent in 8 or 10 applications since my freshman year to various student-oriented cards, and this is the first that was accepted. I think the main problem is the fact that I had absolutely no credit history, not even student loans. But I've finally got a card, which is nice because it means I don't have to rely on my dad for charity or emergencies so much. Of course, I won't turn down his charity while I don't have a real job, but independence is nice. As is establishing a credit history.

And this means there's one more thing I'll have to organize: my checkbook. I've been terrible about balancing it. That rarely matters, but I think it will now.

I should really send out the last of my story assignments right now. You know what? Fuck it. I have several assigned already, and the two or three I have yet to assign can wait until after I've got some sweet, blessed sleep.

Wednesday, March 17, 2004

News - the news section of the Campus Times - is supposed to be balanced and impartial. It's the most important thing. A lack of it is one of the first things that can get us in trouble, and having it is our first and best defense against anyone we piss off, and it's become a social/cultural duty in this country for newspapers to be impartial.

I'm working on a story now. If I hate the people on both sides of it, I guess that's balanced.
I swear, it's all a big fucking conspiracy. There is no excuse for having the Campus Times deadline night on a St. Patrick's Day, and a short story due and a midterm on the day after.

Tuesday, March 16, 2004

Okay, so I got back to my room and the little red light was on so I listened to my messages, and I got one from someone which just said, "Cyrus, this is Chris, call me back, I'll be here all night," and I didn't have a clue who it was. There are a half a dozen people I'm desperate to hear back from, and none of them is a guy named Chris. Is it something important? Is it something old and now out-of-date because I let it go for too long? Am I having a mental block and one of the stories I'm working on is really about someone named Chris, not Greg or Alex or something? I'm on a sugar high, I'm energized, I'm busy, I'm stressed.

So I give up and go to the bathroom, which I was about to do anyways. There happens to be someone in the shower at the time. When I'm about half done I suddenly remember that I had called Chris Calo earlier about a minor story someone asked me to run to clear up a confusion. So I say, "Calo!" out loud, and then, "Oh, that feels good," to have the mystery solved and know that the thing I'd forgot wasn't important after all.

Whoever the guy in the shower was, if he heard me say, "Calo! Oh, that feels good," he was probably surprised.

Friday, March 12, 2004

Normally I think my computer sucks. It's a Gateway, and about a year after I got it I began to suspect that Gateways in general were bad computers. The floppy drive wasn't connected properly when I got it, there's this weird... reverb, I guess you'd call it, when I use a microphone to talk to someone by webcam, the computer freezes completely if I ever let the screen saver turn off the monitor, and every so often I try to turn the computer on and there's a clicking, buzzing noise and it just won't start and I have to try again later. Oh, and how could I forget the fact that the hard drive has completely crashed twice.

But every time I get too mad at my computer, another vacation comes along and I use my parent's computer for a while and damn does this thing suck. It's an IBM machine running Windows 2000. It's slow as death, getting rid of adware and spyware is almost impossible, it always gives you incomprehensible and useless error messages, there are a bunch of Win2000 "features" that are basically bugs because we don't want them but don't know how to turn them off, and it's so fucking fragile that it'll freeze if you're running AIM, Word, and 2 or 3 browser windows and you start playing a CD. Today its Internet Explorer is refusing to work. If I open too many windows, or the windows are running too many applets or they're too complicated or something, then all windows close. But that's just today. If I check with my parents in a week, I'm sure there'll be a completely different problem.

Tuesday, March 09, 2004

Vegas.

Thursday night, we didn't do much of anything. Wednesday was a deadline night, so I had got no sleep except for a couple hours on the plane, and nobody was too much better off than me. We had dinner at a southwestern place near the hotel, walked down the strip a ways, and called it a night.

Friday we got up early for the presentations. Our editors and senior staff would be proud of us: we skipped both the keynote speakers, but other than that we put in complete 9-to-5's, going to every presentation we could. For lunch we went to a Japanese place near the convention. And speaking of "near the convention", we decided we hate Linda (our business manager). There's a hotel right next to the one where the convention was held with almost the same name as the one where we stayed, and we're almost sure she was supposed to put us there instead of where she did put us. Which was almost a mile away. Anyways, Friday we had dinner at this great hibachi place and after that walked the strip a while and drank. Rich and Jackie would have done some shopping - for that matter, I would have too - but no one had a backpack or anything, and we hoped to do some clubbing later on, so we decided not to get anything and keep our hands free. But as it happened, we didn't manage to find a club or anything that would allow in people under 21, like Jackie and Yuting. So in the end we just went back to our rooms that night.

Saturday we were diligent at the convention again except for a keynotes speaker. We went to dinner at a nice restaurant/brewery near our hotel. We had quite a few drinks, there and walking along the strip afterwards. Then we did go shopping. I got "Queer Eye"d by Rich. It was, if nothing else, entertaining. Jackie and Yuting were tired, so Rich and I went to a couple clubs. That was fun. It's very, very nice, getting into a club for free because you're cute. :)

Sunday and Monday, for reasons I've already explained, I spent in transit home. I got very little sleep Sunday.

Today has been interesting. It's had its ups and downs. But I need my sleep and I want to at least make sure it's possible to watch a TV episode I just downloaded and I need to get to some work I have tonight or tomorrow, so I'll call it quits for now.
Someone read my vague entry a week or two ago, the one where I basically just said that I'd decided not to post an entry because it was too personal and depressing. Because I had been so vague, he worried he might have been the cause of my problems. To ease his mind, and also because if I was worried about sharing too much then I shouldn't have started this in the first place, it's posted now.

Let me add yet another disclaimer: things are rarely as bad, or at least as bad in those ways, as they were when I was writing that entry.

Monday, March 08, 2004

Oh, that was great. I am so lucky. I don't normally think of it because it only works on certain aspects of my life or it affects the background stuff you usually don't notice or just because I'm a whiny little pussy, but I am so fucking lucky.

My bus left this morning at 7:25 a.m. I called for a cab around 6:50 a.m. I realized that this wasn't smart when the guy at the first number said there would be an hour wait, and the guy at the second hung up without giving me a time estimate. And yet I made it to the station with minutes to spare. Cool.

I had a scare when I got here, though. No one was waiting for me. So I walked across the street to the first working payphone I found - a not irrelevant distinction - and called home only to get an answering machine. I started walking, hoping I'd only have to go as far as the Alpine Shop, where Zoë works. Luckily, my mom found me before I even got that far - she had read the message about when my bus was coming in a few minutes after it actually did. I guess I should be thankful she got it at all. Especially considering that my sister wasn't at work, so I would have had to walk back the whole way home, about a mile or so, if she had never found me.

You'll notice my narrative jumps from getting on the bus to getting off it. Yes, it was boring. I read, I ate at stops, I slept not much but just enough to be functioning well now. Anyways, after getting off the bus mom and I went to dinner at this place outside town called Rosie's, and I came back here and spent a while reading some books I had spent Christmas gift certificates on and had sent here, and now I'm here writing.

A more detailed update on Vegas - VEGAS, BABY :) - will have to wait until there's nothing good on TV and/or I'm not talking to friends.
Penny wise and pound foolish.

I really should have done as Jackie did and taken a plane home from Vegas. It would have been even easier for me than it was for her, because there must have been flights from Philadelphia - where our connecting flight was - to Burlington. Instead, I decided to take the free ticket back to Rochester, get a bus out tomorrow morning, and save money. Well, it was also partly because buying a one-way ticket puts you on airport security's shit list, but the money was the big thing.

This, mind you, was to come home from a weekend in Las Vegas. If I had skipped that trip to the strip club, or if we had gone the ghetto route on drinks the whole weekend instead of splurging sometimes, I probably could have paid for most of a one-way Philly-Burlington ticket right there. I'm not saying I should have done that; we were in Vegas to have fun. (And to learn about writing and editing and to meet people and bla bla bla.) But with the money I cheerfully spent on trifles, why get "smart" when it costs me about a day at home?

I have a lot more to say about the weekend and stuff. I can think of a couple things that would have made it better, but really, it was damn good. And stuff to say about the latest developments or lack thereof in my love life and my outlook on life in general. But I've learned, finally, a lesson or two from the past: when I'm as tired as I am now, I should avoid all deep thought. So introspective musings will have to wait.

Thursday, March 04, 2004

Well, my cab to the airport gets here at 5:15. With any luck, we'll be ready by then. And then... Las Vegas, on a most-expenses-paid trip to a conference of college journalists courtesy of the Campus Times. This will be so cool.

I've started adopting news section style in my usual writing quite a bit, I've noticed. Not even intentionally a lot of the time. But hell, it's the least I can do.

Wednesday, March 03, 2004

And someone took my laundry out of the dryer for me and folded it! That is so cool - who was nice enough to do that???
The situation resolved itself. Considering how little Sara was able to get, she recommended that I put the story off. So anything that Kim runs is a pleasant surprise. And this is the problem that I felt worthy of two entries. Moral: I worry too much.

As an example of how busy and exciting and interesting being an editor can be, I put my laundry in the dryer... just before 2, I'm pretty sure. I went down to collect it right now. This is not because I'm doing so much stuff but so many things, so to speak. Nothing I'm working on has taken me more than an hour so far, but I'm working on so many things at once, or on layers, that there hasn't been a boring second.

I just came back to my room to pack. Because I need to be ready to get on a taxi to the airport at 5:15 a.m., and I haven't packed yet.

My homework? Hah. Maybe no one will notice if I e-mail those critiques in on the Monday or Tuesday of vacation. Maybe.

Tuesday, March 02, 2004

A third possibility just occurred to me in the Sara-Kim-Eastman cheating snafu: be diplomatic about it. Tell her that I put someone else on it as backup, or even admit that she was the backup. It doesn't make me look bad, and it's true in a way. I mean, maybe that's not why I put her on it, but it is why I kept her on it after I knew Sara's was done, after all. And besides, it could have been true - this is a story it would have been a good idea to do that on.

This is both an ethics issue and a social skills issue: come on people, advice here please. Accept total and complete responsibility, expect the problem to fix itself (which is very possible, remember - it happens if she gets anything at all worth using), or tell a half-truth that makes two or even three of us look good and spares everyone's feelings?

Of course, by the time I get any advice on it circumstances will probably have forced my hand. So this is probably just another exercise in second-guessing myself and saying "coulda-shoulda-woulda". Oh well.

(A fourth possibility just occurred to me: tell Sara the confusion was Kim's fault. But I don't think even I am wimpy or dishonest enough for that.)
Busy day. Made busier by procrastination, but it would have been busy under any circumstances.

At this point, since I haven't talked to Kim again, I figure I'll just let Sara do what she can. There's a chance that she'll be able to get something, and it's worth trying for. I suppose technically that means I'm wimping out and not apologizing like I talked about doing earlier. At least, not yet. Well, who knows - if she can get something good, I have nothing to apologize for, do I.

Okay, so tomorrow I (very optimistically) start the day at the gym, hopefully get a little work done before class, hopefully get a little work done on story critiques during class, maybe or maybe not nap between class and group therapy, do laundry either during or immediately after group, right after group get hard to work on paper stuff, and get >6 hours of sleep Wednesday night.

Wednesday I ignore the Arabic worksheet, pack (it's only a weekend, it can't be that hard to figure out), and... fuck it all. I don't need to have all this planned out so rigidly. As long as the paper's all right and I get on the plane, everything's fine.

Monday, March 01, 2004

CT Problem of the Day:

There's a story going on at Eastman about a lot of students who were caught cheating. A story like this is theoretically my and Sandeep's area. It's a large-scale disciplinary action, so it's news, and even if it happens to be run in the Eastman section we - I, in this particular case - should take responsibility for it. But I only found out about it like Friday, I think it was, and I wasn't sure it would run this week, so with one thing and another I didn't hear back from the person I assigned it to until late last night. Now Sara is doing it. She's a senior who I've never met in person, but if how she's been performing on this is any judge, she's very responsible and stuff, so I'd want to keep her happy.

But the problem is, Kim, the Eastman editor, didn't know I had someone on it. So she went out and pretty much wrote the story herself. It's done. Not perfectly, especially considering that few people want to go on the record, but it's done as much as she needs it, as much as could be done while everyone still insists on remaining confidential. And to add to the confusion, Kim's out of her room right now so I can't ask her exactly how much she might need or exactly what other details Sara should be asking for. Kim might or might not be able to use stuff Sara will find, but if she can't then she won't include it in the article at all or she'll only do it as a favor. In that case, there's no point in it at all.

So that's my dilemma: do I admit I screwed up to Sara and apologize for wasting her time and sending her on a wild goose chase, or do I ask Kim to fit what Sara's got into the story, or what?

Hell, when I put it like that it should be easy - admit to Sara that I screwed up. Really. I mean, fuck, if you screw up, admit it and fix it. But... well, as soon as Kim comes back I'll ask her if there's anything specific she could use. If she thinks certain people might crack under further questioning or later on. If, basically, including Sara's work would be charity or not.

While I'm at it, and I being just too... gentle about this? I'm supposed to be a boss, not a mediator. I bend over backwards to accomodate people all too often.

But on the other hand... if it's my fault, I should fix it. If I had tried to assign this story ASAP, Kim wouldn't have worked on it.

Sigh. I suck. Oh well. If this is a learning experience - if I actually learn something from it - then I guess it's not all bad.
Saturday night I was in the miserable situation of having a number of things I could do, none of which I cared about. I could stay in my room and hang out and possibly work, or I could go see "Kill Bill" which was playing on campus, or I could go to DU's toga party, or I could go to the Roost. Almost no matter what I do I'll wind up thinking about what could have happened had I made a different choice. And if I choose nothing, I feel guilty and depressed because I had a chance to improve myself and/or have fun and didn't take it - however slight it was.

In the end, I went to the Roost. It was me, Eric, Kenny, Melissa, and Mallory, a girl Eric and Kenny knew from church. And as it happens, going to the Roost probably was the best option. As good a movie as "Kill Bill" might be, I would have gone alone. And the toga party might have been worth going to... but then again, I might have put a fair amount of time and energy into making a toga only to get there, find plenty of acquaintances but no actual friends, wind up on the outside of every crowd looking in, and spend too much time drinking crappy beer and losing at Beirut. But the Roost, on the other hand, was fun. Well... relatively. It was better than the average night sitting around here. But on the other hand, I think I scared Mallory with my dour stares for no apparent reason. And I've never told Eric to fuck off before, especially over something harmless like him suggesting I go try to hit on a girl we were all admiring.

Dammit, why does my life suck?

A dozen possible answers to those question immediately come to mind, so why aren't I doing them? Fear? Is it just simply fear, of rejection or looking stupid or something? What else could it be? I never consciously think about it like that. But then, nothing else adequately explains it.

Why can’t I just plain have fun? What was up at the Roost? What the fuck is wrong with me? Why do I so desperately, pathetically feel a need for someone, anyone at all, to share my life with? Why have I been in capable of taking that first step for about a year now?
I started a post here about the good points and bad points of last night's trip to the Roost and my life in general. Eventually it got so personal and depressing that I decided not to post it after all. I don't know, is that a good reason? I don't like being all depressing and whiny and dragging other people down. And I also don't like felling like I'm being pitied.

Well, maybe those aren't good reasons. I may or may not post it here after all - it'll keep. I'll decide later. Now's not the time for a variety of reasons. I'll sleep on it, literally and figuratively. Who knows, maybe it'll just turn out to be garden-variety whining instead of something insightful.