planting winter gardens

it has definitely been a Monday.


Not that anything untoward has happened, its just been a pins and needles kind of day combined with an absolute...lack of grease on the wheels, shall we say.


I am trying to finish up two projects that are...not hanging over my head, but its been an uncomfortable week of overlapping things - some starting, some ending and just plain too much. But I am almost there.


And in the middle of it all, I had the presence of mind to put everything aside for a few moments and take out the violin. I am on my first Mozart, but honestly, at this point, the thing I still get the most into are the bowing exercises. In a bizarre way it reminds me of working on a car. I am not sure how that metaphor or connection works but that is what it reminds me off.


And...I just have been having some deep frustration of late with the whole lame duck idea and also, had a bit of woolies removed from my eyes about an aspect of media that - no, I cannot even claim to have suspected it as so, I was just existing in a state of ignorance about it. And that is the unusual aspect of looking at a series of related articles on a topic. Everyone seems to have the same information and say the same thing. Then, oddly enough, I had to go to the source for one of them and presto! They gave me the press release which I recognized as having been reproduced verbatim in several media outlets as journalistic reporting.


At least Fox makes an effort to add more to a new story then just what ever is created by a PR department. It was a bit...shocking to me. Especially since the...ahhhhhh...piece involved reporting in independent, university and "radical" newpapers. What is so radical about reprinting someone's PR? To me, that is the essence of blind following. And I don't mean PR in a bad sense, not in this instance, but pure regurgitation without any effort to make connections is kind of, useless after the 5th or 6th time, you know?


It makes me think that what is taught in Journalism these days is how to edit provided material together and not how to think.


But that is just me. Maybe it is you too.


I have had way too much caffeine and am so looking forward to tomorrow when I can get back on my mellow tea kick.


36 pages of notes, 6 interviews and my rough draft stands at 850 words. Now, tomorrow holds the task of trimming that down a bit and ramping up my efforts to have my expected word count increased. I haven't mentioned what this project is yet, but will post a link when it is a done deal.


:)


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