May 3, 2011

reading into infinity

I'm having a hard week at work. I mean, it isn't hard like my old job was--I love this job, which means that I'm never unhappy--I'm just working on a particularly difficult and time-consuming project. Basically it is a 282-page scientific manuscript that is making me question the use of a comma, a hyphen, and an en-dash because I'm over-examining it. I get to this point where I feel kind of stupid; I've looked at the sentence so many ways and interpreted and reinterpreted it enough times where I don't even remember what I'm looking for.

Today I thought to myself, "I need to read more. If I read more, instead of watching television when I got home, I would know the answers to these questions." And then when I got home I opened our mailbox and my New Yorker had arrived in the mail. I slid it onto the coffee table and came in here to my room and picked up my computer. At least the hair-splitting part of my day is over. I can't wait until this project is completed.

Mostly, I don't want to look stupid in front of my awesome editor. She's so great, and positive, and I don't want her to think that I don't know what I'm doing, even if sometimes I feel that way.

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