Monday, January 05, 2009

i lost my heart, i buried it too deep under the iron sea

My morning started on an unusually high note at six a.m., since I got to hang out with Sri while getting ready and then dropping him off in Union Square for his conference before driving myself to work. And really, it was pretty much straight downhill from there. I only had ninety minutes of meetings today, which is something of a miracle, but an hour of that was my least favorite weekly meeting, and I'm now trying to decide if I can get off of that project or if I'm stuck with it indefinitely. The lack of meetings gave me plenty of time to get caught up on email, cross some important stuff off my to-do list, and generally set myself up for 'success' in the coming weeks.

However, that's dependent on what your definition of 'success' is -- and I'm beginning to doubt that my definition of 'success' includes corporate whoredom. It definitely used to (and on the days when I covet Versace sunglasses, perhaps it still does), but the appeal of raking in the benjamins by running projects and managing people is fading by the day. It didn't help that on the way home from work, I realized that this is my sixth new year with my current employer -- a fact that should make my good, loyal Midwestern heart happy, but instead just makes me feel like beating my head against a rock.

So perhaps it's a good thing that I usually have meetings all the time -- when I'm meeting with people, I generally like the people, even if I'm disenchanted with the rest of the scene. When I'm only interacting with the scene and not my favorite colleagues, I veer quickly into depressed, fuck-it-all mentality, which does not bode well for my ability to stay sane until my writing career takes off.

The cure for that unfortunately is not more cowbell; instead, the temporary cure is to try as much as possible to only work on projects that keep me engaged, and focus my outside-work life on getting published. That sounds as miserable and perhaps as counterproductive as the old 'cure' for syphilis (a mercury steam bath; supposedly inhaling the vapors cured the syphilis, but at what cost?), but it's the closest thing to a cure that I've got.

However, I did do a couple of great things tonight. One, I made English muffin pizza -- it turns out to be a brilliant idea, since I have various toppings already frozen and a couple of different cheeses in my fridge, so I had one half with mozzarella/peppers/onions, and another half with feta and kalamata olives. Mmm. Two, I bought a printer! I adore it -- it's an all-in-one printer/copier/scanner/fax, and I'm ridiculously thrilled with it. This means that I can research on the internet in earnest and print pages and pictures that interest me. I can also print drafts of chapters that are troubling me without having to pay the extortionate fees of the Kinko's downstairs. Best of all, I can start printing and sending out agent query letters -- every time I get a rejection back, I can just print the next one. Yay.

Clearly my mood today was pretty blah, so there's no more to be said about that. Hopefully tomorrow will be better -- since I have lunch scheduled with Gyre and dinner planned with Terry, it can't possibly get worse, even if I have an eight a.m. meeting and I need to restart my allergy shots. Welcome back to work, everyone, and try not to despair over what's become of your life :) Goodnight!

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