Is it a crime?

I seem to have a knack for switching beats in the middle of budget season.

For the past ten days, I've been attending and scheduling more meetings than writing. It comes with the territory, I suppose, of leaving established sources behind and forging new relationships, memorizing new roles, places, names and faces, getting a handle on a new set of issues.

I was apprehensive when I first learned of the change and though it's exhausting ordering a different sort of professional grind, the busyness, the challenge, moving a different set of chess pieces, can be gratifying, stimulating even. A workaholic's drug.

Sometimes I wonder if I really like government. Is it the complexity of the issues? Is it the watchdog status? Is it the access to decision makers? Is it just because I think deadlines are sexy? Because it really can't be the meetings. Or millage rates.

It drives me to mandatory beers afterward, solitary visits to the beach. Also, insane. But, as closely related as they can seem, I'd rather be doing government than crime.


Photo by Philip James Corwin from Corbis