Friday cannot come any sooner. I feel as if I have already done enough with my hours and now I want to allow the week some time off. Thursday and Friday, can you please disappear? Don’t bring me more work, more traffic and less sleep. Why don’t you join Saturday and Sunday and give me a a nice, long weekend to look forward to?

My day started at 5:30 a.m. yesterday and ended at 10:30 p.m. By the time I got home, I more or less collapsed in my bed. I was so tired. I was the kind of restless tired. The kind of tired when you can feel your eyeballs in their sockets, where if you stay up just a bit longer, the loopy, crazy, insane behavior might start and you wont be able to stop it.

As per usual, Los Angeles traffic was relentless. It still boggles my mind on how people can come to this city and survive its strange behavior and customs. If the Iranian Revolution hadn’t taken place and I had lived my life in Tehran, was forced to wear a head scarf and then one day my parents decided to take a trip to Los Angeles, I think I would have lost my mind. How does one come here from Minnesota and manage to drive to and from work and home on a gridlocked 405 freeway. I am from here and I barely survive it. I’ve learned to tune it out a bit I guess and I am sure that this is what most people do, newcomers and locals alike and that’s how we all survive together, but I can imagine how shocking the idea of spending that long of a time in your car before you get to work can seem.

After work, I had to run over across town to see a press screening of “Ghost Town,” the new film starring Ricky Gervais, or as I like to perpetually call him David Brent. No matter how good you think it is, the American version of the The Office has absolutely NOTHING on the U.K. Office. David Brent rules the world and me and you just live in it. Stapler in jelly, redundancies, Keith, Sergio Georgini, can it get any better than this? I think not.

But I digress. The movie was quite funny, just your typical comedy, with a few twists and turns, but nothing absolutely spectacular, except for Ricky Gervais’ shark tooth. I couldn’t help but think about David Brent throughout the whole film, albeit a grouchy, loner David Brent. I hate when I go to press screenings, and they’ve combined the press with a gazillion other normal movie-goers who just happened to get invited to an early screening. I can’t stand it. It takes away from the professionalism of it all. I guess it’s a good way to judge how the film is perceived by others as you watch it, but I still get annoyed.

Earlier this year, when I attended the press screening for “The Wackness” at Sony Studios, it was so…professional. I hate to use that word again, but it’s the way it felt. I was going where normal people didn’t get to go, to a private movie studio lot, where I was handed an identification card to put on my car and had to maneuver my way through the buildings, check in with the publicist from the public relations firm, and sit in the theater, with other journalists. It was so fulfilling. I felt like a real writer, with other writers, in a special place just for us, so that we can watch this film, and either love it or hate it. I don’t mean to romanticize the whole thing, but I love being a member of the press.

I love it. It’s what I live for. The power we have just overwhelms me at times. Granted, it’s not something many would think of as ‘power’ but it is influence nonetheless.

After the screening, I got on the road with a bladder so full that if I had some how made a sharp turn, I would have burst. As you can imagine, I went straight for the toilet when I arrived home. And then after that, I went straight to my bed, and the lines of vision between the real world and sleep world became blurry and I eventually and quickly dozed off.

I dreamt about writing and typewriters and Jack Kerouac and Anderson Cooper and the New York Times. I saw myself talking to the homeless of Los Angeles, trying to tell their stories. I thought about my byline appearing in a national magazine. My visits to the Educational Testing Service website the day before to find out more about the GRE (Graduate Record Examination) danced around in my head and made me just as nervous thinking about exams and scores and no.2 pencils as I had been in high school.

Today, I got up the nerve to register for the test. I will face my doom in a month’s time. Needless to say, I am frightened. Very frightened. Standardized tests don’t sit well with me, but then again, who do they sit well with? This is the first step I must take to continue my education. A first, very scary step. A step that will lead me to a Master of Arts in Journalism or English. It’s now or never. I am ready to take the plunge. I am not, however, ready to take a rigid test that has no bearing on my skills as a writer, reporter, editor or decision maker at all. That’s the harsh reality of it, I hope it isn’t taken too much into consideration by my prospective institutions of higher learning. On the other hand, there are a couple of Universities I’m looking into at the moment in London. Fortunately, these schools do not require silly tests like the GRE. Thank God for the British. There are many decisions to be made in the coming months, many late nights, many stressful situations, many doubts and hopes and fears and dreams all rolled into one, about education, life and love. I’m ready to face it. I’m quite ready. Being a journalist, making a difference somehow, someway in someone’s life means more to me now, than it ever did before. I’m hungry for it and I don’t think I will ever get full.

Rose Bowl Flea Market, Pasadena, April 2007, by Keeg