![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
I wanted it to rain on the drive back to Gainesville. Don't know why, I was in a good mood and going at a pretty good clip, but all I wanted was for the clouds that had migrated and hovered and chased each other like sheep across the infinity laid out in front of me. Instead, I woke up, made it to the edge of campus before being soaked through in my entirety, and went home in torrential rain. I don't think I saw even a sliver of sun at any point of the day. It was wonderful.
Mondays are usually the hardest at work. Not for any particular reason, as my "class day" (read: two one-hour periods instead of just one) is Wednesday, but maybe because the taste of the weekend is still on the back of my tongue, and my next fix won't be for another four days. But today, from the minute I put in the door code, I felt happy. I remembered how amazing my job was, how much a little grammar, the right turn of phrase, giving advice to a writer and laughing with the editors made me giddy. But spending every night under fluorescent lights, in a stale office that reeks of mold and sweat because it's always either too warm or freezing, no air circulation, no windows? It starts to grate. And I start remembering that I haven't read my friendslist since last December and that there are unwatched Stargate Atlantis episodes on my laptop and man, I'd much rather be reading that fic I didn't finish before passing out last night than this green stringer's second write-through.
But tonight, I remembered that I love my work. The evolution of stories and the gratitude of the writers (and let's be honest, the praise of their teachers doesn't hurt either, especially when it's Foley), writing just the right headline (especially the ones that end up linked on Collegehumor.com the next day), eating Moe's for the third time that week at my desk, shouting that copydesk has SEX or whatever silly semi-relevant slug we come up with that night, wielding a red pen as gleefully as necessary, having a cigarette on the back porch while joking about what happened at the office party last weekend - it's fantastic, all of it. None of the rest of it even registers most of the time.
But not having been home (read: seen Miranda) in three months, doing the same routine for minimum ten hours a day while sleeping shoddily and too much for as long, the stress of job interviews and trying to have my ducks in a row for graduation and not knowing what's on the other side yet was making me slowly crazy. I felt it, and I resented everything in my life because obviously, it was something in it that was causing this. Well, that may be the case, but it's not my job, because I realized that doing three people's work as I've been since the semester began is neither healthy, nor normal, nor feasible. This weekend was like an exercise in absolving myself of my shortcomings, and remembering what I love for these last couple of weeks is a gift.
Mondays are usually the hardest at work. Not for any particular reason, as my "class day" (read: two one-hour periods instead of just one) is Wednesday, but maybe because the taste of the weekend is still on the back of my tongue, and my next fix won't be for another four days. But today, from the minute I put in the door code, I felt happy. I remembered how amazing my job was, how much a little grammar, the right turn of phrase, giving advice to a writer and laughing with the editors made me giddy. But spending every night under fluorescent lights, in a stale office that reeks of mold and sweat because it's always either too warm or freezing, no air circulation, no windows? It starts to grate. And I start remembering that I haven't read my friendslist since last December and that there are unwatched Stargate Atlantis episodes on my laptop and man, I'd much rather be reading that fic I didn't finish before passing out last night than this green stringer's second write-through.
But tonight, I remembered that I love my work. The evolution of stories and the gratitude of the writers (and let's be honest, the praise of their teachers doesn't hurt either, especially when it's Foley), writing just the right headline (especially the ones that end up linked on Collegehumor.com the next day), eating Moe's for the third time that week at my desk, shouting that copydesk has SEX or whatever silly semi-relevant slug we come up with that night, wielding a red pen as gleefully as necessary, having a cigarette on the back porch while joking about what happened at the office party last weekend - it's fantastic, all of it. None of the rest of it even registers most of the time.
But not having been home (read: seen Miranda) in three months, doing the same routine for minimum ten hours a day while sleeping shoddily and too much for as long, the stress of job interviews and trying to have my ducks in a row for graduation and not knowing what's on the other side yet was making me slowly crazy. I felt it, and I resented everything in my life because obviously, it was something in it that was causing this. Well, that may be the case, but it's not my job, because I realized that doing three people's work as I've been since the semester began is neither healthy, nor normal, nor feasible. This weekend was like an exercise in absolving myself of my shortcomings, and remembering what I love for these last couple of weeks is a gift.
