No matter your age, income, status or lifestyle, deadline sweat is rife.
Whether it’s serious like the wait for transplants and divorces or simpler like appointments and expectations, we all feel the heat.
But I’m a print guy. I edited professionally for five decades and have written since I was a kid. Newspapers, magazines and certainly websites are driven by deadlines. Half a century of that type of pressure has made me trickle, often profusely.
Yet, such moist wordsmithing doesn’t portend failure. Success has more to do with anticipation, craft and process. Mostly, editing needs self-discipline. If you don’t provide it, discipline will be imposed. Believe you me.
Deadline sweat isn’t the same as flop sweat. That’s when you realize, despite all your effort, that disaster is inevitable. Although the two sweats can and often do mesh, at least deadline sweat still gives you a shot.
I thought retirement would be drying. It wasn’t. Friction with our fellows always means interminable demands. I still seep over my medical, social and cultural commitments.
Though I try not to sweat it. Much.
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