Downtown Reno at 10 p.m. on a Tuesday night

I'm so worn out I can barely keep my eyes open. Friends at the Sagebrush, notorious for causing all employees to forget the comforts of a night's sleep, are telling me I look unusually tired. My body will soon rebel if I don't rest soon. Right now, I'm not terribly busy and where am I? If you guessed curled up between the sheets, you're wrong. In fact, I'm at a 24-hour coffee shop in downtown Reno sipping a Mocha to stay awake. Why would I want to stay awake you ask? I have no idea, but I'm happy. Genuinely happy. I think my mind needs to unwind, something sleep just doesn't cut it for.
I'm sitting in this cafe downtown and I'm surrounded by things that make me love this city. Seeing as how this is the only moderately large city I've ever lived in, I'm not sure if it's any city or just Reno. That's not important though. Time to get back on track.
Right now I'm in an old brick building in an older district of downtown near the river. There's a wine bar conjoined to the building I'm in and a beautiful cathedral-style church across the street. It's a part of town with an artistic feel, and the people around me mirror that. There's Beatles music playing and for some reason it seems strangely fresh despite the fact I know all the words already. There's a couple of girls in the corner obviously in love and a young man bringing a girl to the end of a mid-week date. There's people reading, students working on homework and two construction workers stopping in for coffee (no idea why they're working this late). This place is genuinely alive at 10 p.m. on a Tuesday night.
Of course, being Reno, this is all accompanied by the near constant din of sirens in the background and a faint neon glow from the skyline that is just barely blocked by the buildings. Also, being Reno, less than a block away the city feels much less inviting but that only seems to add to the charm of where I am. A sort of shelter in the dirty city, so to speak.
I can honestly not tell you what persuaded me to come here alone with my laptop to write this. It would have been just as easy to head home and unwind in a much more domestically comfortable way. Something tells me I wouldn't feel as at home as I do now, though.
I love Reno. I love cities. I love feeling like I'm surrounded by thousands of people I may never see again.
I want to hear what they have to say. I want to hear their stories and tell them mine. I want to know why they're in this coffee shop in downtown Reno at 10 p.m. on a Tuesday night. I want to ask the girls in the corner about love and the girl who just walked in where she got her bag (an old-looking bag with a Pan American Airlines logo on the side). I want to talk politics with the man reading the news on his laptop and coffee with the woman behind the counter.
So there's that.

My long, self-pitying rant

I really hope my life this year isn't a preview of what life as a journalist will be like after college. I've been so busy I barely have time to do anything that's not work. I'm desperately trying not to fall behind in my classes. While I feel like I'm succeeding with that, it means I have no time to exercise, eat anything that requires more than 30 seconds preparation time, do my own laundry, read anything that's not for school or news, partake in any hobbies or see friends with any frequency at all. I know it's kind of a special circumstance, I am pretty much doing the entire news section by myself (for those that don't listen to me complain every day, the news editor usually has two assistants, I have none) and that the job of a "section editor" for the Sagebrush actually means being a section editor, lead reporter, design assistant and Web technician, plus going to school full-time.
Ok, so as I'm writing this I'm realizing that there's no way being a reporter in the real world will be this much work, because it's not four jobs thrown on top of school. I'm still getting close to burning out though, and I'm trying to work through it because I know I want to be a journalist. I would quit the Sagebrush, but I signed up for a year and have a sense of obligation. That and I genuinely like the people I work with, and don't want to completely screw them over by leaving. I guess I am just kind of going through the motions to get through the year though.
I'm sorry to anyone who is reading this, I know nobody wants to read my ranting complaints, but writing it down helps me. I would keep it to myself but being a journalist, part of writing is publishing.
Moving on though. So being an editor has made me realize that I HATE managing people who don't know what they're doing. I am an absolutely dreadful teacher. That aside, how do you get to college without basic writing skills? And worse yet, how do you expect to specialize in journalism (or English, I have a few of those) without the same basic writing skills? I literally had a writer who didn't use apostrophes until his third draft! And he got mad at me when I edited his copy because he was editor of his high school paper and thought that made him hot shit. Sorry bud, but that just makes you sound pathetic, not cool.
The worst part about this is all the behind the scenes crap. I spend at least 20 hours a week doing stuff people aren't even supposed to notice. If you think making a newspaper is just writing and reporting, you're only about .0000001 percent of the way there.
To top all this off, I'm way behind in trying to find an internship for this summer. Sidenote: I'm killing myself to be more appealing for an internship where I will make no money and live in a (most likely) very expensive city. So long cushy firefighting job that makes me rich compared to my peers, I'll miss you. End sidenote.
I'm trying to look forward to things though. Danyelle comes back from Mexico in December, and next fall I'm going to be studying abroad (if all goes well). I honestly love journalism and the Sagebrush, but hate being a section editor.
So there's that.