Having worked at night my entire adult life, I find it difficult to adjust to staying up late and sleeping for eight or so hours straight. So here I sit in pitch darkness, my face illuminated by only my computer screen, trying to find things to write about.
It has been fun, but I’ve also mostly just wanted work to be over, so I could do “real writing.” And that never happens unless you take a lot of time off, because otherwise your work writing uses up all your potential real writing juice. And then one day you’re old, and then shortly after that, you die.
I had been kvetching a little about the learning curve involved in training for my new job, but I’ve realized something here: It could be much worse. I could be the staff writer for a place like Salon or Slate, with my master’s in English or my journalism degree, using my toe to stub out the flickering remains of my dreams of publishing an influential book of poetry or the Great American Novel as I listen to my editor tell me to produce a few hundred words on transfixing events like the release of 24,000 pages of Sarah Palin’s emails, or the latest twists and turns in the whole guy-named-Weiner’s-weiner saga, or any of the other bits of effluvia that make up our 24-hour news cycle until I can’t take it anymore and forcibly eject my brains through the back of my skull with the help of a bullet. At least I enjoy the writing I do.