Once in a while, a personal post
Three random facts about me right now:
1. I have been ill for the past week. It isn’t swine flu, though my mother called me up at 8 am Sunday morning to make sure. There is no justifiable reason to call your ill daughter at 8 am on Sunday morning. NONE. I have a phlegmy throat and therefore coughing fits, a runny nose, and a huge zit on my nose. The zit, unfortunately, is not specific to the cold, though it might be related to me not having any energy to cook and eating like crap all week.
(As a side note, however, my skin and I have not been friends since the year I went cold turkey on my dermatology meds. Note to self: never go cold turkey on meds ever again. Or translate to just never take meds again. Yes, I am that kind of person.)
2. It’s nearing 1:30, I haven’t packed, and I’m going in to my internship tomorrow–this is mainly because I only go in twice a week, and I missed last Wednesday because that’s when I started feeling sick. I stayed up late to read YA lit, because it makes me feel more normal. I’m feeling a bit confused about my internship. I like the work, but remain unsure if they have anything else they’re planning on teaching me. I know I’m good at the work they throw at me–readers reports, mailings, CIP tagging (lol) and god forbid checking correction proofs. I read a lot of manuscripts. (In fact, I read a great one the other day about a pasty boy who capitalizes on the Twilight phenomenon and tells people he’s a vampire to try to improve his standing with girls.) But this is what I’m wondering, for any of you who have office experience:
I am a pretty efficient worker. I wonder if I’m just garbage at socializing, schmoozing or networking, however you want to call it. I like people, I can talk to people and work with them, but I really am an introvert at heart. I’m bad at the ‘casual friends’ thing, but I’m great at the ‘good friends’ thing. I can’t just randomly friend someone on facebook, and I usually don’t talk unless someone addresses me.
Now, at work, I realize a lot of time is spent on pleasantries–visiting each other’s cubicles, having coffee, something… And because I can both read and listen at the same time, I’ve overheard a lot of my co-workers babbling about people’s weekends, their Halloween costumes, their dislike of this and that (and one unfortunate incident when I heard them saying not-so-nice things about authors I actually like). I’ve kept my mouth shut, of course, because I’m the intern, and nobody seeks me out except for the occasional hello, because I’m both temporary and quiet on top of that. The mean part of me wonders if this is why publishing is so damn slow, why people take ages to respond to things. I spend a lot of my time working—I read a 300-page manuscript in a morning, and I have the reader’s report by lunch. I go through a pile of unsolicited manuscripts beginning from Jan 2008 in an afternoon. I take care of the check requests and the book orders and tagging. Oftentimes, I feel like some of the editors are fishing for work for me to do.
I’m a bit embarrassed to be asking this, but am I working too hard? I have no idea. Maybe I prefer reading manuscripts over babbling. Maybe I just never gelled with the office environment. I actually prefer working from home. I know everyone says networking is important, but goddammit, do I have to?
3. We discussed Hobbes’s Leviathan in class today. One girl seemed slightly put off by the fact that I do not have any interest in participating in politics. According to Aristotle, this makes me unfit to be a citizen. According to Hobbes, I am forfeiting my right of nature to someone else. Politics is tiresome, if you ask me, and I am happy, more than happy, to hand off that responsibility to someone who both has my best interests at heart and actually enjoys it.
The girl was right to say that one cannot simply assume everyone is like me. I agree with that. People who have the desire and the competence to govern, should. But I was taken aback by her insinuation that I was keeping myself ignorant, or that I didn’t care about people who were suffering injustice, or that I didn’t want to make a difference. Actually, I’ve thought about politics a lot. When I was in environmental engineering, I entertained these illusions of grandeur where I would become a policymaker that would make the world more environmentally friendly. Do I still wish I had that optimism? Maybe. Probably not. It broke my heart every time I learned something new, about the way the political system works–campaigns, lobbyists, corporations, imperialism, influential extremists, tabloids, and all that jazz. I used to discuss politics with everyone who asked me about it. I was pretty well-informed about the 2004 election, but by the time the 2008 election rolled around, I just could not get excited about ANYTHING.
I know. Really shocking. I just didn’t care, and still don’t. (gasp!) Because I can’t care about anything until the system is fixed. It’s like sawing off the tip of the iceberg, everything under there is still there and will eventually fuck you over, even if you don’t see it. I slept through Obama’s inauguration. I don’t read the news regularly. It just depresses me.
I can only guess at what happened. I read Montaigne. I read Mill. I became a libertarian. I do know, consciously, that some people at this crazy radical liberal university of mine call themselves libertarians to be ‘trendy.’ I’m not an admirer of Ayn Rand, I think she’s a bit bonkers, to be honest. But in the end, I know there are beyond billions of problems that exist in the world, very few of which I can personally solve, and the only person’s happiness I am solely responsible for, is MINE. I want to be happy. And if that means I’m watching So You Think You Can Dance instead of the news, then people can call me uncultured all they want. I of course do not mind helping people I care about through tough times, but in the end, they, too, are responsible for their own happiness. I think far too many people worry about remote problems because they’re too unsettled to face the ones close to home.
This isn’t an excuse to be selfish. I help out any way I can, when I have a little bit extra of myself to give. That’s important to me. I admire politicians and policymakers who have more of that ‘extra’ to give, but it’s not for me. That’s why I choose to bow out of politics. It took me two years and a lose-nothing transfer application to get out of engineering and onto a path I like, which makes me two years older than all the sophomores in my class. And maybe the girl will understand in two years. Maybe she’ll still be passionate about politics. I hope so, since we need more people like her, and not so much cynics like me.
Ryan says:
Can I call you uncultured for watching So You Think You Can Dance instead of Dancing With The Stars?
:: at 4:38 pm on November 25, 2009