"SURVIVOR" THOUGHTS ... EVEN THOUGH THE MEDIA TELLS US NOBODY WATCHES IT ANYMORE

As far as the sole winner of "Survivor", everyone else was right and I was wrong about the winner.

Still, the person who won was my second choice. For the exact same reason that he exhibited last night. The guy was a BORING winner. They barely spoke to him on the post show because his whole "Aw...shucks" routine is NOT a routine...the guy literally has nothing to say.

He can hang up any high-profile post-"Survivor" gigs like endorsements or radio shows. He's got about as much charisma as a pencil eraser.

Still...as the host put it...he was the lesser of two evils.

Anyway...that's all I did last night. Watched "Survivor"...ate pizza...blew on the boy's tummy during commercials.

That kid loves to have his tummy blown on. He climbs up into your lap, climbs right up onto your head, lifts his shirt up and waits for you to blow on his tummy. Then he just laughs and laughs.

I kinda had a mini-breakdown at work yesterday.

It's finally dawned on me that I have officially become snowed under with work.

I have confidence in myself that if I bust my ass for the next two weeks or so, I can get to where I'm on the cusp of being on top of things. It may take less time.

We've got a new girl at work who graciously volunteered to help me out. That was too cool. During our meeting yesterday, I basically said that yeah...I was snowed under and yeah...I could use some help. But I was going to get it done on my own and I wasn't going to ask for help.

The new girl must have taken this to mean "I'm not asking for help...but if you want to volunteeeeeer your help, I'll be forever in your debt."

Which she did. And I gave her a bunch of tapes to start transcribing the interviews from.

I had a heart-to-heart with my evil boss Wendigo during one of her non-evil moments. She gave me some much appreciated advice and today we're going to work at getting everything organized and settled in my office.

I'm not the most organized guy in the world. When I was at the newspaper, one of my first editor told me that a true writer's desk was cluttered and messy. I took that sage wisdom to heart and have never been one to clean my desk because whatever I may need is there somewhere.

Then, the CEO of the company walked in while Wendi and I were talking. He said that he had a computer program that would get me VERY organized.

Now...I thought that the disorganization that I was suffering from ... well...there's just no computer program that can help me out here.

I was right.

But since he's a good guy, I let him install the program on my computer anyway.

It's basically an electronic appointment book. You type in your appointments and every day it tells you what appointments you may have. It even has a section called "Whores" in case you have a problem remembering to pick up prostitutes. It's pretty elaborate, I'm tellin' ya.

I've always kept my appointments in a manual appointment book that I write them in.

And I've never really had a problem remembering my appointments. What I have a problem with is my work building up to a point where I'm overwhelmed by it all. My problem is that I helped out when an editor left the company and did her job for a few months. And during those few months, the writing part of my job piled up because I let it. My writing deadlines were months away...the editing deadlines were staring me in the face and saying things like "Here we are. Your editing deadlines. Just letting you know we're still here and we're waiting on you." So when we hired a new editor and I went back to writing, I had approximately 60 stories to be written. And that, Little Buckaroo, is what we in the publishing business call, "a shitload".

Anyway, with the new girl's help, and with editors breathing down my neck, THIS is when I shine. THIS is when I do my best work. THIS is when I rock the house (y'all).

It is the pressure of the deadline that compels me to kick ass.

Watch.

Observe.

Admire.

...Yeah right.

But in my defense ... when I had those editing deadlines, I rose up to the challenge and had my work completed TEN DAYS before the actual deadline date. It's been a few months since that deadline passed and I think some of the editors may have forgotten how I totally kicked ass meeting that deadline. Which is a shame because it should serve as a reminder that I will TOTALLY KICK ASS meeting these new deadlines.

That's how I work and it's when I work well. Under pressure with a ton of stress on me.

And now I'm there.

And I need to go to work.

Because...I'm pumped. I'm jazzed. I'm ready.

Bring it on. Bring all sixty stories on now.

I'm ready.

Let's do it.

Let's roll.