You! Stay away from my notepad!

About a month ago, I was asked to write up a proposal for a possible new

venture the AHA is interested in investing some time and cash to, and over the past three days I’ve sat here hammering through as much as I possibly can. The process hasn’t left me dead and clamoring for a savoir as many of my co-workers had initially suggested, quite the opposite, in fact. I’ve found myself enamored by it, really. Calculating the structure, contemplating an introduction and conclusion and creating tightrope segues from subject to subject have become more entertaining to me than pretty much anything. While I sit at home, on the computer or watching the tube, I find myself coming up with more to say or different ways in which to say it. There are post-it notes cluttering my computer screen with yellow pieces of ideas, arranged in specific orders, and emails sent from my personal account to my work address outlining a paragraph or a new point that was before not thought of. Conversations on the ride home with my dad provide even more ideas. Our usual conversations of family affairs, the Baltimore Orioles and “what Shirin is doing” turn to this proposal and the ideas that seem to navigate my mind at jackass-on-a-Wave Runner speeds. He seems impressed as he gleans a different perspective or possibly new applications that he had been tooling with when he had to write up a similar proposal. The conversation usually ends with one or both of our phones losing connectivity and usually begins again when either one of us regains our bars, making Speed Racer movements through traffic as we iron out the finer points of how to implicate the process and ad-revenue issues.

It all seems obsessive and written out, in long hand, on a white legal pad that

I’ve become overly perfective of. With thoughts of taking it with me or hiding it somewhere in my desk like the two silver acorns I bought at the Nasher Sculpture Center or my ear-bud headphones. Perhaps this is a bit more paranoid than obsessive as I’m worried that someone is going to steal the idea, write their own report and have a leg up on me as this is my first proposal. Sneaking into my cube while I’m at lunch or at home with leather gloves on like a jewel thief or safe cracker.