Promotion Not

I'll be the first to admit i have half assed this week at the paper. Editors got really really pissed off today at the meeting and i distinctly felt guilty for my part in it. Message recieved.

But what got to me was the fact several reporters got promoted to staff and i am still contributor. I know, i haven't written as many articles as they have and i have been pretty useless but that didn't stop the sinking feeling.

Again with the whole selfish-what-about-me thinking. Could this prove my theory that i am super self centered? I don't even care about promotion or even the paycheck. I barely even notice that i get paid at the paper. I just see it as something i have to do, not really a paid thing, hence my second job. It was just the principle that i didn't excel. I hate being mediocre, even when i deserve to be regarded as such because of my mediocre performance. It's hypocritical, i know. Don't try and find logic in this train of thought, just climb aboard and enjoy the sights.

I am disappointed that i haven't been working hard enough to get the notice of any one of my superiors. I complained and made excuses and half assed and i am pissed to hell. I want to quit but i do not want to give whatever being i am trying to prove myself to the satisfaction of proving me useless and incapable. I am depressed by all this. Every other reporter it seems it a staff writer.

Shite. It is all shite. I don't care. That's my stance now. I don't give a shite.

Passing craze

So i saw the most beautiful boy today.

It starts.

Ok, i saw him officially for the first time last semester, he was Mr. (insert university name here) and on our school website and i saw him in person at a play during Black History month. HOT. So hot. And involved. Hella involved. I was smitten, he is intelligent, beyond fathomable gorgeocity and right there. So close.

But something made me lose interest last semester and i forgot all about him.

Until i saw him a couple of weeks ago. He came into the store to talk to a classmate of mine who was buying something. I was at the till and i caught my breath when i saw and heard him. Sexy mother...

So i was like, ugh!! So cute but it wasn't that bad you know?

Then today. I was waiting to go to a city council meeting with student government and they were meeting outside Starbucks on campus. I had just gotten off work and i was still in uniform. I walked up to my classmate and she and i were talking about a test we'd had in Comm Law last week and who should emerge from behind her somewhere? You guessed it. Mr. Sexy himself. So me and this girl are talking and i am vaguely aware of my voice sounding more and more strained and my chest becoming tighter and i am horrified that i may just pass out when she stops talking and introduces us. OH. MY. GOSH.

Mr. Sexy shook my hand and i thought it would fall right off. He looked at me. In my horrible glasses and uniform and crazy hair. Crap!!

So i think something in the handshake did it again because i haven't stopped thinking of him all day. But i decided to facebook him and see if the reason i lost interest and forgot all about him was because he was already dating some other disgustingly gorgeous creature of perfection with cute work outfits, pretty hair and sexy glasses.

He is. Mr. Sexy is in a very serious relationship with Mrs. Sexy. It all come back to me when i saw his profile. Oh.

The funny thing is, i saw him last week and though i thought how cute he was, i wasn't phased and really forgot about him until today. But she just had to introduce us. Why the hell did she do that. And though i am over it, i can't help but feel a slight twinge of depression. Why couldn't he be my boyfriend?

I have since decided i am in no position for a boyfriend what with my taking more than a full class load, and working two jobs. Plus my head is not right, i am not mature enough to deal with a real relationship right now despite being 22 going on 23. But it saddened me to realize Mr. Sexy was spoken for. Mrs. Sexy is beautiful and just as involved and smart as he is. They are perfect for each other. And i can't help feeling jealous.

My coworker at the paper just started a new relationship with this gorgeous white guy she met in Latin class. She is super pretty and super focused and determined and 4 years younger than me. Four. When she was telling me all about her man, i put on my "i'm-so-excited-for-you-i-could-burst" face. But i was feeling hella jealous.

What is wrong with me? Why can't i be happy for others even if i don't have what they have? That is not very nice. Am i not a nice person? I know everyone is jealous at some point, but am i honestly that self centered? Wow.

I hate that this depressed me. So Mr. Sexy is not mine. Neither is Morris Chestnut. Big whoop.

Big whoop indeed.

Journalism and me today.

This profession and me have a love hate relationship. I hate it a lot of the time, but after all the stress and all the hair pulling, i see my byline in the paper and i am pleased.

I dunno if i am going to do this forever but today i feel i CAN do this. I just flip back and forthon that everyday but today i feel i can be a good journalist and i am motivated.

Tomorrow i am gonna want to quit and go to law school instead. But i will be back here next time one of my stories is published.

I was so upset that one of my stories was assigned to someone else. It was my story, my idea, my beat. International students. The story was international students surviving in this city without cars or public transportation. I had a major Test Tuesday night. They wanted it for Wednesday's paper, due Tuesday at four. I offered to submit it the next day. They gave it to someone else. I was crushed.

That was my baby you know? My beat, international students, is my baby and i nurture it. It is almost like having someone come in and raise your baby. I am passionate about international students and their woes and joys and all. I am one and i love writing about people like me. So when a story that is mine, goes to someone else and has their byline on it and they are covering and looking after my babies (the international students and their offices) i am upset and i feel i let them down.

Is that sad? I am supposed to be the in house expert on my beat. So if i miss something and don't cover it the way i feel it should be covered, it is not good.

Rant over.

Thursday musings

A guy came in to work today to my register and i did what i always do, I smiled big and asked how he was.

He said i had the perfect smile.

Huh.

That was sweet. Haven't had too much of that this semester. Or perhaps i have been too busy working two jobs and taking 15 hours to notice.

Dad sent me $2000 for a car today. I love my dad. I know money is very tight back home. They haven't paid them in months. MONTHS. But he still sent me money though i am old enough to work that out for myself. He says that is what parents are for.

Thank God for parents like mine.

Now i have to figure out if i can buy a used car for less than $2000 and pay insurance and everything for it. Hmmmn.

We'll see.

Tuesday should have been rainy.

She died today. Last year. But today. I can try and force myself to cry but i don't feel like crying. She's not here to take care of me anymore. Or to just be her anymore. She is not here anymore to be my strength here when my own are so far away.

She's not here and though i don't feel like crying, i feel empty inside today.

I wish it were Wednesday. Because Tuesday means she's not here.

I wasn't going to write a memorial like everyone else on the planet, but i did anyway.

I remember watching the coverage on CNN international back in Zimbabwe. The whole country was ablaze with horror and disbelief. My friends and I didn’t really believe it, it was surreal and seemed like some off colour joke. But it was on every news station in the world and everyone was talking about it. I didn’t feel much of anything at the time. I felt so detached. I thought, “I’m not American, this doesn’t really concern me.”

I realize how harsh and maybe even ignorant that sounds coming from a well-traveled member of the proverbial global village but my reasoning was that terrorism was a global plague that had affected just about everyone BUT the United States up until now. And yet, once America got hit, everyone was supposed to fall over themselves in grief. I was angry.

I didn’t understand how when embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed and both Americans and Africans die in the tragedy, no one really spent two minutes on it. When thousands of innocents were being murdered in ethnic cleansing and mass genocide was taking place in poor countries, people tusk tusked but were quick to move on to more important things. But let America the Almighty get hit and the whole world was expected to shatter lest you be regarded a terrorist.

I thought felt the pain that Americans felt. I really did. The attacks were inhumane and evil. But there was a bitterness I felt that though it was a grave tragedy that needed attention and though those were innocent lives lost needlessly, that somehow the world was regarding this tragedy more important than any other tragedy in the world simply because it was America.

I can not say I was justified in my anger, afterall I was bitter. I did not hate America by any means or wish harm to her people. I was just bitter. But it has taken me five years to come to a turning point in my thinking. After watching the fifth anniversary video, I think I momentarily felt the Armageddon-sized horror people in this country felt the day it happened. In my mind the past five years, I have done everything I can possibly do to challenge what I thought was blind allegiance of most of the world to America. I wanted to prove everyone wrong.

I wanted to show that America brought this on itself. Not in any malicious way, but just to bring what I felt was perspective to this event. Why would someone hate a nation so much that they would take their own life, not to mention the lives of many others, to make their voice heard? Could that really be nonchalantly written off as insanity and an evil religion? Or was there one grain of justification to it all?

Was America to blame for this tragedy? Did this government kill in own people in the name of pushing forward its own agenda? I am not a conspiracy theorist by any means, but I wanted people to consider that perhaps these individuals who undertook this mission to destroy and utterly devastate had felt that America had so viciously destroyed and devastated their own hopes and dreams to the point where they wanted to hurt America as badly as they felt they had been hurt, even if it meant them dying in the process.

I was so busy being annoyed at Americans pointing fingers and effectively isolating anyone who wasn’t committed to their cause that I didn’t have time to notice I was becoming the other extreme, pointing my own fingers. I missed the point by a long shot. It wasn’t about whose nation is bigger and gets more coverage. It wasn’t about the sudden bubble of patriotism that sprang up and around the U.S. and inadvertently isolated the rest of us. It was not about deserving or not deserving a taste of your own medicine or even a taste of the medicine many other nations had been force-fed for centuries.

It wasn’t about Americans not wanting to include the rest of us in their grief because they were too worried “we” would attack them once again, the collective rest of the world that is. They fingerprinted and took my picture at the airport. I was randomly searched and interrogated by airport officials who didn’t understand that I was coming out of Iran because my family HAD to live there and that I was just trying to get an education. I don’t blame them, it was a rough time. But my focus was inward, how this is about me and affects me as a non-American. It wasn’t about any of that.

It was about the humanity of life. Children who didn’t even fully understand right from wrong had their lives involuntarily sacrificed to some inhumane god named Terror. Men and women who didn’t get a chance to tell their loved ones “ You know, I really do love you and hope we never fight again,” were cheated out of a second chance. Loved ones waiting at the airport with flowers and big “Welcome Home” balloons were left stunned and deflated. Someone interviewing for a job at the World Trade Center that morning wasn’t even given a chance. A firefighter doing the right thing and trying to help was left wondering why bad things happen to good people as his life dissolved before his weeping eyes.

I can fight and argue with you all day about the unfairness of the hierarchy of world politics and journalism. I can name ten other global terror attacks before Sept. 11 that came and went without the majority of Americans even hearing about them. I can debate with you and debate with you. But is one person’s life more important than another’s just because of where they are from? Did all these people die in vain? I hope to God they didn’t. Sept. 11 is a time to remember life. And truly a time where patriotism has to be a global reaching effort, not isolated to individual nations and regions. We have to be proud of the world we live in because no matter where we are from, we are still citizens of the world.

red.