Fun Vampires Well, it seems to always be an annoying autobiographical pause these days at the Coma. I'm back at work. I get tired but I really like the people I work with and its been awesome to just hang with them. I work for awhile and then I come home. You see, I have a theory. We get stressed at the paper. We go from being well-liked (but then you are only as good as your last paper) disintegrating into despised in a matter of seconds. It is the lot we lead. So, we try to keep the fun vampires out. And garlic just doesn't cut it. Fun vampires are those people, and sometimes that includes me and members of my staff, that suck the enjoyment out of day. Not every day is going to be great, but it can be better if we keep a sense of humour about things. Here are the things I know about work. Any kind of work. There are certain people in this world that like being angry. Angry is an easy emotion. Being thoughtful and thinking things through takes a bit of energy that these folks just don't want to commit to. Some people just like being angry and because there is a sense of ownership from the community over the newspaper, people get all judgemental. My favorite thing is over Letters to the Editor. People will write a letter and then get upset when other folks have an opposing point of view. My reaction is that free speech applies to everyone. I love it, and this happened recently, when a letter is denied and then the author of the letter will say that he/she is sending to another paper. (Why was a letter to the editor denied, you ask. It probably was the bestaility and masterbation comments about how the gay marriage amendment was going to destroy the world. Had to pass over that one. I run a family business.) You can wake up and do the best you can or you can be pissed off. Don't get me wrong, I get pissed off very easily sometimes but usually it is at people not taking a moment to be kind. Most days, I just groove as best as I can. I also want to say that while working at a small paper, our writers and myself have to go from trying to understand healthcare law for a story one day, and then rape laws the next. There are no legal correspondents, no education reporters, religious journalists etc. You get my drift. It's just writers doing the best they can from day to day. And this is one thing I love about it. I get the best of all worlds and we are not confined to a box. But then the Fun Vampires descend. But we have learned, me and my partner in crime Tammy Lynette, to deal with these dastardly creatures. We ignore them. And we laugh. Because laughing helps and it tends to work on the Fun Vampires better than a bucket of water on the Wicked Witch of the West. Groovy.  ¶ 11/17/2006 06:46:00 AM