Can I get some more stress please?
By Staff
Scot Beard
This has been a busy week and unfortunately it is only Wednesday.
In addition to my normal duties, this week has had a few extras tossed in to help drive me crazy.
I have been working on the football preview, and in an effort to try to make it look good, have spent quite a bit of time on it only to hit delay after delay.
I spent several hours tinting the photos so they would look good in the paper.
Unfortunately, they were still too dark and I had to redo all the photos.
When you see the football preview, you will understand why this was such a time-consuming project.
Speaking of projects that take a long time, the cover was no easy undertaking. I spent a couple of days working on the cover to get it just right.
Then I found out because of some miscommunication I was doing it on the wrong size paper.
I had to redo the cover from scratch. Fortunately, after spending so much time on the wrong one I was able to throw the bigger one together quickly.
It seemed that the closer to the deadline I got the more problems arose.
All of that is stressful enough, but municipal elections were Tuesday.
I drew the assignment of covering the Phil Campbell elections.
As someone who enjoys the political process I was thrilled to have that opportunity.
As someone who was about to scream from having too much to do and not enough time to do it I was not looking forward to covering the elections.
Before I called around to find a straight jacket I realized covering the election was a good thing.
After spending all day Monday and most of Tuesday at my computer, the election gave me a much-needed excuse to get out of the office.
Though it was only a brief break, it did help me maintain my sanity – for a little while anyway.
I will be spending all of today putting the finishing touches on the football special section and I am sure there will be some frustration involved.
Unfortunately, there will not be any assignments that will help take my mind off the stress for a few hours, but I will have something to laugh about.
Years down the road I will have a funny story to tell my children and grandchildren.
It is about a sports writer who is so confused he was happy to cover an election because it took his mind off football for a while.