All fired up with no one's ass to kick

The words were beginning to blur.

I glanced at the alarm clock. 11:15 p.m. Time to try and get at least six hours of sleep. 5:15 a.m. would be knocking on my door sooner than I wanted it to.

As my finger touched the light switch, the sounds of U2's "New Years Day" filled my room.

Oh god, who's calling at this hour. Please, please, please don't let it be anything with my mother or father.

It was one of my friends from the favorite former job. Checking to see how things went when I handed in my resume and clips Friday. Then she did the best thing anyone could have done.

She got me all fired up about the job. She reminded me that I could do this job (I was starting to second guess myself). She reminded me that six years of experience, even without a journalism degree, counted for something. She also gave me the best piece of advice anyone could have given me right now.

Fight for it. Fight for this job.

So I'm going to.

The hell with all of those snot nosed little punks fresh out of college. So they worked on their high school and college's newspapers? Big whup. That's not working at a 40,000+ circulation newspaper. Covering crime in State College is lettuce of a totally different color from covering crime here.

Deep down, I know I CAN do this. And thanks to my friends, god bless their loyal souls, I'm going to make sure I do it. Whether it's in this city or not. I'm going to do this.

A side effect of this new found fire? I'm all revved up in other parts of my life too. Been to the gym twice this week. Yesterday I killed myself in an RPM class (could barely get out of bed this morning) with room mate #2's girlfriend. Today, kicked ass on the eliptical, added weights to the lifting regimin and stared down some girl who gave me an evil look when I got to the recumbent bike she wanted first.

Eat that.