daines'n around

I had an outburst last week. It was very uncharacteristic for me. I tell the story to friends, and they all laugh at me because i was quite overwhelmingly concerned about the matter. If preoccupation could pace around the carpet in my bedroom, I'd surely have worn a grand oval in the floor.

I've been struggling as of late. The Daily Sundial is a little sort of brainchild and pride and joy, if i may merge those two clichés together. I am prided when i see someone pick it up and flip through the pages, even if they only look at the pictures.

I've been disappointed with some of the content, both in my arts and entertainment section, and the general news / opinion / sports sections. A few weeks went by without a general meeting of the editors in charge and the lack of communication began to breakdown some of the vital part of a cohesive newsgroup.

At long last we reunited in our previously thrice-postponed weekly meeting, and my concern with lack of communication issue was met with mostly a strong defense by the other editors involved.

The stress of not being able to find enough writers mounted as I searched for someone to take care of just some of the CSUN arts stories. How was I supposed to cover these without writers, let alone the stories around the Los Angeles and Northridge area?

After the meeting I was presented a fax of a story idea and told that I needed to cover said story because my section was lacking. My defense mechanisms went up and i started to get angry that a supportive attitude was not available, but I could easily find someone unsympathetic with the problem I'm having. (Not coincidentally, my problem is not only mine; it is the problem of the entire paper.)

I grappled with trying to calm my on-edge nerves and breathed from behind the rapidly antiquing iMac at my desk. I asked that, if the future, my constructive criticism be a little more constructive and supportive rather than negative and fault-finding. The response I got was ill-thought out and irked me in such a manner that i instantly responded with,

"No, that's just a bitch attitude."

I paced back and forth in my mind for quite a while afterwards. After some apologies on my part, and mine alone sadly, things are on their way back to normal in the newsroom.

I also dyed my hair this weekend.

There is a certain feeling, an incomprehensible one that eludes all available combinations of the human forms of communication. Not even a photograph could convey the feeling of waking up in a strange location, in utter bliss.

The strange soundtrack backing the city portion of my trip consists of a few sounds. Saint Madeline's call to mass and quarter-hourly chiming of the bells makes the hours that I don't get out of the house seemingly pedantic in their treatment of the day. The rushing water of a leaking faucet into a tub that no one cares to repair causes me to wake up in the night thinking it might be rain, hoping it might be snow and realization after sleep-laced thought passes.

Church in Salt Lake is strange. It's just like the church in Los Angeles, Peru or Brasil; the little differences are startling however. The atmosphere is much more determined. Everyone has three options, it would appear. One: Be engaged. Two: Be dating one person exclusively and hoping to be engaged. Three: Be morose and have excuses why you aren't dating someone. Morose in that false-smile, shake-your-hand, and feign care in anything anyone has to say.

That's a first response after a short two and a half hour period in a stuffy building filled to the very edges with "young single adults."

There are a strange amount of homeless people in Salt Lake City. the wide streets and ample sidewalks seem to underscore the dozens wandering each square block. Makes me wonder if L.A. County Sherriffs aren't dropping them off here, as well as skid row.

I found internet access this evening, but don't know when I'll get online again. I rent my first car tomorrow. I'm thinking i'll make it out to the Salt Lake which the locals speak so badly of these days.

I should also be on my way to provo, if everything goes correct.

It was interesting how different life can become with a week and a half in a slower town without the normal hectic newspaper and college deadlines and assignments. I feel as though I've come back from Salt Lake City and the eastern parts of Utah and Colorado a new man. (Man, boy, young man... I guess I've got to deal with it sooner or later, I'm 25 for goodness sakes.)

I'm ready to take on the rest of the semester, the five and a half weeks that remain, with a new vigor and intention to complete everything and more of what is asked of me.

Published in today's paper was an article I wrote about the feeling of culture shock in Los Angeles after coming home from Brasil more than three years ago. I was up most of the night writing and tying up other odds and ends before my trip. They changed all of my Brasil with spelled with s to z, and took out some of my more reflective parts "for space concerns" so they say. I was almost utterly disappointed in the article until I got an email response this afternoon from someone who read the article.

Life In Brazil is the article in its online form.

The email message I received wasn't lauding my article by any means, but rather someone whose attention sparked up at the mention of missionary training center and remembered her recent conversion into the church a few years ago. She had become so caught up with her studies that church has become an infrequent hobby instead of the same lifestyle that she lived for the years she attended before going to the university.

She ended the article by writing,

"I really don't know why I'm writing you, but after I finished reading your article, for some reason I just wanted to share this with you and also thank you for reminding me of the little things that bring happiness."

Whatever animosity I felt towards the editor for taking out some important part of my article were gone when I read this response. I didn't change this girl's life, and may not have made an impact. But she thought about her own life enough after reading my article to respond in an email message to me. Coming from a campus of more than 32,000 students, where less than 500 students vote in the student government programs, I'm overjoyed that even one person responded.

I'll put up photos from my trip in the next few days. I have more things to write about but don't know how to put it down, whether or not I should share them in this forum, if anyone would bother reading it other than myself, or if I should return to the brutally self-honest days of blogging some two years ago. More than likely I'll write more when I put my photos online.