Friday, October 19, 2007
A quick note
I'm exhausted. Physically and Mentally.After a whirlwind weeklong celebration of my 24th year of life last week, I got thrust into this trial on Monday.
I walked into the office and my boss calls me into the office and tells me to haul tail to the Kent County Courthouse for jury selection. See, in addition to covering the town of West Warwick, I also cover county courts for my bureau. I was a little upset that I hadn't know this was coming down the pipeline, but I headed down to the courthouse and sat through two days of jury selection.
I've been covering the trial ever since. At each break and recess, I call the Web team at the paper and give them an update. After court wraps for the day, I head to the office (or file remotely if I can) and write up about 18 inches for the next day's paper. Yesterday, I crafted this tale based on the testimony of one witness.
Besides sitting on those hard wooden court benches all day, the case is just kind of trying. I have a heart, so to think that someone could hurt an innocent child like this is really upsetting. I haven't been getting a lot of sleep -- not necessarily because of this alone -- so that's been making things rough as well.
Today, I'm writing for tomorrow and after listening to testimony, I have absolutely no idea what I want to write about. I've spent the last 15 minutes trying to choke down cold Chinese food from lunch. I'm too exhausted (or lazy, take your pick) to go to the microwave in the conference room. It's 5:50 p.m. My story? Due in one hour and 10 minutes.
I have no focus. My head is blank.
This should be interesting.
Labels: 24-hour news cycle, burnout, courts, deep doo-doo, writing
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wow. That's such a sad case and I can only imagine how draining it is to cover each day. You have my deepest sympathy . . .for eating cold chinese. Yuck. Happy belated;)