One must Imagine Sisyphus Happy

So I know it's been a while since I updated. This is mostly due to the fact that my work is silently and ploddingly killing me. I get in early, stay late, rinse and repeat. It's exhausting. I actually felt this huge surge of resentment towards my bosses and the company yesterday, which is awful. I adore the editors I work for! They're young and friendly (and bask in the glory of their attractive assistant) and they really are human at the end of the day, which is what I need to keep reminding myself. Sometimes I feel like I'm ready to make myself the victim and to picture the two of them as the aggressors, the bullies, shoveling piles of work onto my desk and filling my inbox with miserable requests. Which they do. But they're also understanding, they care about my well-being, and they laugh at bawdy jokes, which is all I can expect of anyone. Nonetheless, I'm distinctly beginning to suffer from a Sisyphus complex. Every time I think I'm getting a handle on all the work, I take a massive landslide and find myself trudging up the same path. It's too bad, because only yesterday my boss came in and said, "you know, I just wanted to tell you, today when I came in I felt so thankful that I have such a capable assistant here who can cope when I'm away." By the end of the day I felt the need to apologize for my crabby behavior. But it was an exceptionally shit day, which she herself acknowledged. I don't know. I'm trying to stifle a huge sigh of self-pity and failing pretty badly. It's just that everyone says it takes 3-4 months to get used to this job and to feel like you're capable of managing your workload. I know I'm only about a month in, but my insecurities have kicked in and all I wonder is, am I really capable? Is the reason I'm so tired and frustrated because this job isn't right for me? This is basic work. Am I incapable of doing any job? Should I get a rich husband?" Advice is welcome; I'm a little desperate at the moment.

I'm taking a class at the university, which is rather exciting. I haven't as yet decided what it will be (Soviet literature? Children's lit? American Fiction?), but I went to my first lecture today. It was so exciting! I wondered why everyone else in the room wasn't as keyed up about being there as I was. Mostly they all seemed to be wearing jeans or miniskirts and polos or rugby shirts. It was like high school all over again. This girl next to me clutched her cellphone in her hand the whole time and yawned like it was going out of style. What's her problem? Modernism? Fiction? Narrative? Politics? It's like a goldmine. And she's yawning. Princeton has bums, I never thought I'd say it.

It's bizarre to see so many students around. I had been enjoying the loveliness of a quiet and barren campus for the past few weeks. And now! Students are flocking around in droves, each one dressed more scantily the next. I don't know what to make of such a foreign student body. At least I could recognize faces at Columbia. The problem here is that I still look like an undergrad. Everyone I meet asks me what I'm majoring in. How nauseating. Hasn't it occurred to them to sense the immense leap towards maturity and professionalism that I've made? Where is the 'sexy young professional' badge I always knew I'd trademark? I could also simplify the matter simply by wearing black clothing and thereby throwing off the wave of nantucket red shorts and navy polos frothing on campus. Still, it's nice to have a change of dynamic.

Yesterday: intense work, over to Clara's for drinks and appetizers. I took hydrangeas (blue, gorgeous, they even brought me out of the doldrums) and wine. We talked and drank Prosecco for 3 hours, whereupon I stumbled home and collapsed in a blind oblivion. I've got to say, a wine-soaked haze? -- it makes everything a little crisper, a little more golden.

Clara is a dear. She's full of eccentricites that deserve comment -- she collects insects and is something of an amateur taxidermist. She claims to have spent her college life alternately living at home with her parents and taking up residence with her lovers. She's very dainty and southern in her mannerisms but she smokes like a chimney and makes the occasional saucy comment just to catch you off guard. She fell in love with a woman for a long time but is now dating a 38-year-old man in NYC. She seems to drink in every moment of her existence and bald-facedly refuses to believe that she can't enforce her own agenda. Plus, she reads (avidly) and makes a mean cucumber sandwich with the crusts neatly rounded.

Tomorrow: work, followed by 70s-themed party at the "D-Bar," the infamous graduate student bar in Princeton. I'm having dinner with my housemates and then we head out to boogie to the bee-gees. The good news is that given the current humidity, I won't have much work to do for that afro I'll need.

Good luck on the GREs, Katy-kat! I'm thinking of you and doing silent cheers at the copy machine.