I'm a Survivor.

Heavens to Murgatroyd, man, but I am exhausted. It's hard work trying to relax when you're predisposed to panic at all times. And no, I did not know the proper spelling for Murgatroyd before I spelled it just there. Nobody's perfect. Well. Almost nobody.

I just interviewed a world-famous violinist I've seen in concert several times, and whom I admire greatly. "Exhausted" is the word for how I feel just now after having hung up and sending a thank-you note to his publicist. (See, Mom and Dad did teach me some manners. It just takes extraordinary circumstances to yield any fruit.) I prepare for all interviews basically the same way: I have some ideas for questions in my head, I read everything there is to read about the person and their field as a general overview, I see if there are any new or revised ideas for questions I've thought of while researching, and then I write out several dozen questions for them, and rewrite them several times.

It's like training for an interview that way, so that when I'm overwhelmed by the glow of my subject's sheer fame, my mouth can form the questions my mind cannot. Then, once we're on the phone, I start naturally and kind of navigate the questions I want to ask organically from there. That way I can deviate and ask new questions as they come up, and I have a good feel for the overview of the interview. It always has a really casual feel to it and I really enjoy talking to them. It's a generally good experience and I'm really grateful. Apparently Eisenhower once said something to the effect that D-Day went nothing as planned within ten seconds of its commencement, but it wouldn't have worked without the planning process, even though the plans themselves were rendered useless. It's kind of like that.

Yes, well, this time I basically just felt like an idiot. Any time I asked a question, I basically mouthed, "What the heck?!" to myself while squinting my eyes really hard and bracing myself for some kind of physical reprimand. I would squish three unrelated questions together whenever I looked at my notes because I just couldn't handle the agony of trying to maintain even an ostensibly lucid facade. (In case you have a silly image in your mind, it was a phone interview. I wonder if he's going to start reading my blog when it's famous in the future, look back on this, and have a whole different view on things?) It's like a slug trying to take a nap inside a salt lick and pretend it's no big deal. It's more like a single kelp among zillions trying to communicate with the whale by whom he's just been ingested. (Do kelp have gender? I don't know. But I do.) (Do those analogies represent the feelings I had? Don't ask me now. Not right now.)

I don't know when in human evolution our mental self-sufficiency was selected to be abandoned in times of social panic, but I'm calling shenanigans on it having anything remotely to do with my social or biological fitness.

Anyway, I'm just unwinding now. That might have been a smidgen hyperbolic, but there it is, on the record, for the world to see. And that's how facts are made. I was literally kelp earlier today. Dispute me. I defy you.