i’m stressed out. for just no reason, or so it seems.

i have the confirmation for tonight’s concert, but that doesn’t seem to relieve me a bit. i work distracted, or more accurately like a ball of nerves, switching irregularly between black coffee and cigarettes. i read a bit, but i’m at a point in my book – what i love by siri hustvedt, in case some geek here wants to chat about it with me – where it’s a general mess in the narrator’s life, just like the first part – and first half – had only settled the plot so that everything could go wrong in the second part. i don’t know if there’s a third part yet, but it wouldn’t surprise me much, for its density and tension can’t just end up with a second act, there has to be a third act, at least to give a clue about where it’s all leading.
the book is stressing me out even more, i begin to feel it in my chest when the narrator describes his own pain “as i wandered around the loft trying to calm myself, i realized that i was holding my chest like a man who had just been stabbed.”
and that’s just an example.

i turn off the music for awhile. then i turn it on, change the cd, listen to half a song and turn it off again. i chat a little and it seems to take the stress away for as long as there’s someone at the other end of the world to talk to me, then i’m alone again, and i’m back at checking my watch a hundred times a minute and checking my mails when i’m not glancing at the clock. sometimes i do both at the same time.

and even as i’m doing something else, my brain keeps reminding me that i’m stressed as hell because i’m going to a concert tonight and i’m supposed to make pictures, i know my name will be on the list, and that a photo pass should be waiting for me as well.
that’s a thought i hate. i hate knowing that i’m making a mountain out of something that should be common to me, that is in fact, common to me. i’ve been to concerts often, i’ve taken pictures often, too, and i’ve taken pictures of concerts often enough to rationnally overcome my stress and the pressure i consciously create just to see how able i am to deal with it…

that’s one stupid challenge, and i know it, but i can’t help. it’s the waiting and anticipation that’s killing me, for if someone were to tell me to make pictures, only a couple of minutes before a band is on stage, i’m pretty sure that i’d be more focused and concentrated and that i wouldn’t lose time and thoughts wondering if i’ll be on time if i arrive at the doors an hour before the show, if i’ll make my way to the stage, if i’ll have enough batteries, enough films or memory, and how the lights are going to be, and how i should frame the band, and if my lenses are clean, and if i’m going to make at least one good picture, and if i look professional and self-assured enough, and if my name will be on the list and, and, and…
i keep consuming my time in questions i either know the answer very well, either won’t be able to know before i’m there, so why am i driving myself nuts with these questions ?

i don’t know.

and sometimes, answers appear all at once, when i have to make three persons check out their respective guest-lists to find me, or not, in tonight’s case, and i have to remember that looking assured and a bit desperate at the same time kinda works, and the definitive answer to this particular show comes when the woman at her desk tells me on the definitive tone of all definitive answers that there’s no photo pass for me.

you’ll ask me, what’s the point of all this ?

and that’s exactly my question, too. :|