Like Sands Through the Hourglass . . .

Hey, Redneck Diva, if you need any inspiration for your assigned genre in this round of the WitToI challenge, just drive on down to visit me for a few days: my life is a soap opera.

An horrible, infuriating, breakdown-inducing soap opera.

I play may roles in the soap opera that is my life, but the role which seems to have taken over recently is that of the peace-maker, the mediator, the "can't we all just get along?" guy. I try to squash conflict whenever I can by playing devil's advocate; trying to make sure that all involved parties know where the other parties are coming from; trying to straighten out miscommunications; trying to dig others out of the dark pit of pessimism and paranoia -- yes, basically trying to make sure that none of my friends act like my younger, uber-neurotic self, using my overly developed obsession to over-analyze situations for good instead of self-destruction.

Most of the time, I don't mind playing this role because it makes me feel good to know I might have been able to help my friends work through some tricky problems. But sometimes, when the involved parties are constantly taking umbrage at the words and actions of one another and I spend more time and energy worrying about how I'm going to keep things from exploding than I do actually sleeping . . . at those times, the role's not quite as rewarding, and I worry that my life's going to go from "soap opera" to "murder mystery." And, right now, my whole week has been one of those times.

Although, on the bright side, if that were to happen today, then I'd at least have something to write about for my assigned genre in the challenge . . .