I don't know what's wrong wtih me these days. I feel so stressed out at work. I don't know if I'm just paranoid, but maybe the honeymoon with my employer is over. I don't know. I just feel so stresed out, but I know it's not just me. Everyone around me is stressed out as well. One of my bosses had a huge red rash on his face, and when I asked him about it he said it was stress related.

I know I should feel grateful for my job, but I'm not. And that's definitely not a good thing. There's this new guy in my group, who used to be ad account manager, who is now an admin assistant. Now that's tough. I've never had it that tough. I don't envy him, and I kind of feel bad for him too. But he's a nice guy, and he's trying desperately hard to move up so he's all happy and cheery. And I envy him, and sometimes get mad at him for being so happy.

It makes me feel like I should be that way. I should be walking around all happy and grateful just to have a job, but I don't feel that way and it kind of freaks me out. Instead two months in, I feel fat, overworked, stressed and tired. One of the guys in the department said everybody new in the company looks shell shocked for the first few months, so he told me it was normal.

The ad guy who's now an admin assistant transferred from another group, and there's another new guy who was contractor for two years before they hired him in my department. The guy has a PhD from John Hopkins and he had two consult for two years before the company would hire him.

So you see, I'm not that bad off. So why do I just feel that way. I've got to fix my attitude though. I don't want it to look like I'm walking around all angry all the itme, even though that's what I feel like.

Sometimes I think I just don't work smart enough and it takes me forever to do anything, and my bosses are mentally making notes what a bad and slow worker I am. Or it takes me three times before I get something right.

I had to write an executive summary, and my boss kept sending it back saying it was too long and it needed a 30,000 foot view. I had no idea how to write the darn thing, and it was so frustrating. Finally when I saw the final copy it was just bullet points and four sentences.

My boss kept sending me emails begging me to write the cliff notes version of a 20 page presentation. She said senior execs just want to take a guick glance at was presented, and then if they wanted more info they could read the attached presentation.

I don't think I'll ever get used to writing the "30,000 foot" view. And I feel bad that I think that, and stupid and dumb as hell that it took me three hours to figure out how to write four sentences and with about four bullet points each.

I can't wait for my work week to be over. I'm starting to think I hate my job, but I haven't been in it long enough to hate it. Maybe it's just not a good fit, and I'm only now starting to realize it. Even if it wasn't a good fit, it's not like there's any place for me to go.

If there is one good thing about being back in a busy corporate office, it's how much I appreciate coming home at the end of the day and having my weekends off.

I wish I could just detach myself from my job, and just leave at 5 pm. I have to start doing that. I am definitely taking my job way too seriously, and getting all stressed out for nothing.

I've stopped writing because I'm so stressed. Thank god, I haven't stop reading. Reading is very relaxing for me. Reading feels like an escape from my dreary world. Writing used to feel that way, but now it just feels like something else I have to do, something else I have to excel in, something else I have to stress about.

I'm staring to realize that writing is really like a job. I've got keep doing it regularly to get good, and keep doing it even when I feel like total shit. This attitude feels so wrong somehow. Writing used to be so fun, so escapist for me. I used to be able to escape in my writing, and start living in the world I was writing about. I used to find it relaxing to pretend to be someone else in my writing. I've got to figure out how to bring the fun back into my writing.

I think I just figured out why my new job is less than enjoyable right now. I'm so busy that I can't enjoy the feeling of accomplishment of doing things. As soon as I finish one project, I'm on to the next project.

My old boss told me that my new company was in really bad financial times a few years ago. They were losing money and not doing well. Then they got this huge, huge contract and that really pulled them out of the red ink.

I think because the new company has gone through some hard times, it feels like they're always playing catch-up. They're always running to keep up with the competition. The new company instituted a new policy of "expecting the unreasonable". I think one of my bosses takes it too far, but it's not just her. All the managers are trying to do that. The thing is, you can only do that if you know your people really well and you're not already understaffed.

Whatever. I know my attitude about my job has to change, or I'll just be very unhappy at work. And I can't spend 8-10 hours a day feeling unhappy. I just have to figure out a way to adapt my working style to the company's without stressing myself out. Maybe that means not leaving right at 5 pm, but leaving at 5:30 pm and then not worrying about my job. It all works out anyway, and I think I've forgotten this dictum these last few days.

I have major workaholic tendencies myself, so I know I can't blame my unhappiness soley on my job. I just have to transfer my workaholicness to my writing and away from my job. I know part of my unhappiness these last few days has been because I haven't been writing. Whatever I get out of writing, it must be enough to make me go through some serious withdrawal like symptoms when I stop doing it.

This week was especially hard though because I had my film history final tonight, and I spent every night since last Friday trying to study. I worked out on Saturday and Sunday, but didnt' write. Then I spent the rest of the week studying and didn't write or work out.

That's weird isn't it? For me to think that I'm going withdrawal because I'm not writing, like writng is a drug to me. If writing is a drug, I have no idea what I'm getting out of it. What's up with that? I'm not getting any tangible benefits, but I'm going through withdrawal when I don't write. But the whole whidrawal theory so makes sense, and as soon as I came up with the thought it was as if a huge weight was lifted from my shoulders because it feels so good when I figure things out and it makes sense inwardly.

I had the weirdest dream this morning. I dreamt I was in a relationship with some guy I knew when I was in junior high. I was in junior high and he was a senior in highs school. I only knew him because he used to pull on my braids when he walked by me. I was 13 years old and I wore my hair in braids.

But like I was such an innocent 13 year old, that I just thought it was so annoying that some guy I didn't even know was pulling on my hair. It wasn't till I was much older did it occur to me that maybe that guy him was like flirting wtih me or something. I don't know, because there was some other guy who used to pull on my braids as well. It's still such a mystery to me.

Anyway, I think I dreamt about this guy because when I was home last summer I found out that he had run for mayor of my island and lost. The guy from junior high was really smart, and went to USC and then went on to law school.

When I first heard the story all I remembered about the guy, his name was Randall, was he was that annoying senior freak who couldn't stop pulling on my hair. I couldn't believe he had come back home, opened up his own law practice and then tried to unsuccessfully run for mayor. How bizarre is that?

In the dream, we were together but here and not at home. Only the dream was kind of fuzzy, because then Randall the laywer island guy turned into this other guy I met a few years ago who was in law school here in San Francisco. So maybe I just had a dream about marrying lawyers or something. But it was so weird to dream about that guy from junior high, because I haven't seen the boy since junior high.

Just thinking about it gives me the creeps. I was 13 years old and the guy was 17 or 18 years old and pulling on my braids. What was up with that? And my poor 13 year old did not know what the heck was going on? Not that being older makes a difference, because I'm just as foggy about men and their actions now as I was at age 13. Clueless!

I finally started reading "A Thousand Acres" by Jane Smiley. I couldn't help myself, but I had to read the last chapter to see how it ended. It's a bad habit I have. I wish I didn't because now I'm disappointed. Oh well. I think I would have been disappointed whether I read the ending or not.

In the screenwriting class I took a couple of weeks ago, the Hollywood guy said that most characters in movies are very unaware. I remember sitting there and thinking that movies must be like Oprah books then, because the character in her book pick are dreadfully unaware. The characters in these books are so unaware of the consequences of their actions that all I want to do is slap them and make them get into therapy.

I mean, not that I'm not that self aware myself, but honestly the people in some of the Oprah books I've read aren't even the kind of people who would watch Oprah. What's up with that?

I'm specifically thinking of the book "House of Sand and Fog". The woman in that book was so silly to me. I was so unsympathetic to her character, that I really did not care what happened to her. I only finished the book because I wanted to find out what would happen to the persian people.

I got the same reaction from reading "White Oleander". After awhile I was like when is this character going to get it? When is she going to watch Oprah or go to the library and borrow a self help book and read it and learn?

I have a feeling "A Thousand Acres" is an Oprah book,and I'm going to end up hating the characters. I don't know this for a fact, but I've got a bad feeling about it. I just don't like characters who aren't very smart or who don't make an effort to get it together and fight against doing stupid things.

I don't know, maybe because I so relate to them and can't admit that to myself or I really can't relate to them and can't even find compassion in my heart to feel sympathy for their plight. I need characters to fight a little against their worst impulses, or at the very least, think about it a little and feel some kind of remorse. And then if they need to, give into their worst impulses, but at least go into the situation with their eyes open just a little, instead of tightly closed.

I want them to be like moths drawn to the flame, trying to fight the flame, but drawn to it nonetheless, only to get burned and die. But I think I want character to be like moths, because that's how I sometimes feel about my life. I'm that moth, and I get drawn to the flame, and I get burned, only I don't die. I get bruised as all heck, but I don't die. Not yet anyway. I just get up and keep on flying, because what else if there to do but keep going on.

Buying clothes is much more relaxing to think about than what is going on in the news. I have been deliberately avoiding the whole Nick Berg thing, because honestly I do not want to see someone beheaded. What is point of witnessing such cruelty, especially when the reports said the idiots took a long time to do it.

Beheading was once reserved for royalty, think England for example, because you get killed quickly and relatively painlessly. Those terrorists forgot to read their instruction booklet on beheading because they completely botched the whole thing up.

Honestly! If you have to behead someone, at least do it right and don't mess around with taking too long. It's like that scene in the movie "The Green Mile", where the evil prison guard deliberately forgot to wet the sponge for the death row inmate's head. And then when they tried to fry the guy, they literally ended up frying the guy and burning his hair and head because there wasn't any water to conduct the electricity quickly and easily to kill the person.

Maybe that's the point though, it was supposed to be torture and not a mercy killing but my point is the same. Why does anyone want to watch such things? It's like people on the freeway having to slow down whenever they see an accident, because they have to see how bad it really is. How entertaining is that to see a car with people in it on fire or someone's head through a windshield or hanging bizarrely outside a car window like the neck was made of rubber.