down to business

I used to have this job at a publishing company. It was right after I graduated college w/ my otherwise useless English B.A. and I managed (with my one meager "connection" -- a writing professor who loved me) to land what they called a "springboard" position in the mailroom of a relatively presitigious literary publishing house in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. A small house, but they put out some good stuff, even a few Oprah books and "Big Fish," the novel on which the movie was based.

Anyway, I was thrilled to have this job, having imagined myself w/o prospects and forced into grad school early -- living a life tucked away, rotting in the dank halls of academe. But no, I was rescued by the real and vital world of publishing and now I had visions of glamour and glory and something along the lines of very-important-work. The day I discovered Alice Walker's number in the rolodex on my desk, I thought I had arrived...

However, I hated that job. I hated the job and very quickly I started hating the entire world of publishing, which is a story for another time. I hated that job because it was, at times, overwhelming and I maintained a high level of anxiety that never abated through the entire 10 months I spent there. I was terrified by the Editorial Director, the wonderful and larger-than-life matriarch who had co-founded the company many years before. The only real Southern Aristocrat I'd ever met, she was so far out of my league she may as well have been from some exotic planet in an as yet undiscovered universe.

I was terrified of her and terrified of fucking up. Terrified of forgetting something. My job in the mailroom wasn't as simple as it sounds. I was the office gopher. I was the one everyone, in every department, turned to for help, extra-hands, grunt-work, etc, etc. My duties were many, varied and ever changing. I was constantly juggling a million tasks w/ different deadlines and I fucked up at this job more than I have ever fucked up before or after.

Underneath all that, I'd just come out of a job I loved and was really, really good at. I'd been working in a group home with mentally retarded adults for almost three years while I was in undergrad. I loved that job. I was really good at that job. I didn't realize it until I was at the publishing company, but I'd really come to identify with that job -- with being good at it. And suddenly I found myself basically floudering and miserable in my so-called chosen career. It was awful!

I woke up stressed out every morning, I went to bed stressed out every night, I was stressed out all the way to work (a long commute w/ plenty of time to perseverate) wondering if I'd find another little post-it from the scary lady upstairs stuck to my desk telling me of another fuck up, I was stressed out all the way back home again, running over all my tasks, all my deadlines, trying to figure out if I'd done everything, trying to anticipate how I'd cover my tracks if I hadn't. It sucked!!

I notice something of that feeling in my relationship with bird-lady. I feel overwhelmed by some of the work she's asking me to do. I feel nervous that I might be doing it all wrong, fucking it all up. I feel a few steps behind and ashamed to be unprepared when I meet with her. I feel so much smaller than the experience. Sometimes. It's not as bad as the publishing company. But the seed of that old feeling is there. What to do? Pull that seed out of the ground and roast it and eat it so it can't grow? Or maybe water it and let it grow and prune it into a shape of my choosing?