New job report!

I'm now four days into my new position as an editorial assistant to an acquisitions editor for a publisher in Baltimore, and I must say, I think I'm going to like it here. My boss is a fantastic man who is witty, capable, and independent. He expects nothing less from his assistant, and I am thrilled to be in a position where my best efforts are continually expected. It's so much easier to give 100% in an environment where it actually makes an impact than it is somewhere that half-assed is good enough.

I've already been pegged as "the creative one," a role I am quite happy to fulfill. :) Yes, I'm a musician and writer. How may I help you today? I'm trying to take the creative energy that I pour into those things and find ways of channeling it into things like problem-solving and spreadsheet interpretation. So far, I'm enjoying it. I didn't take this job expecting it to fill a role that music and writing do. I took this job because it seemed like something I could be good at and engaged in. Now I'm trying to see if the things that music and writing have taught me can be applied in other contexts. I'm willing to believe the answer is yes. And practicing creativity in the mundane makes it flow more freely in the sublime, or so I argued in an article once.

The act of getting to and from work seems worth mentioning, as it is now between a three- and four-hour process, depending on the day. I have lately discovered the joy of mass transportation, so my commute is now 45 minutes to an hour on the highway followed by the same on the LightRail, both coming and going from the office. The LightRail lengthens the commute but is cheaper than parking and gas, not to mention being much less stress-inducing than the JFX during rush hour! It's also nice to be able to read, write, study music, listen to the iPod, or just plain zone out. That seems to be making a big difference in my mental health. Although it's a long haul, I'm in much better spirits than I recall being in for some time.

I've gotten into some interesting discussions sparked by this new position. When you take a standard corporate dayjob, what does it do to you as an artist? Is it wrong to achieve some level of compromise with your needs and your wants? If you feel that the thing you think you most want wouldn't be practical to pursue, is it wrong to put that dream on the back burner? To relegate it to the bin of beautiful but unattainable things? My personal plague right now is, how do you know what you really want? Sometimes, I feel overwhelmed by various sets of expectations and ideologies that I feel that I can no longer dissect what is mine from what is everyone else's, in the sense that I don't know what I've been talked into and what I truly desire. I don't feel like I can honestly answer the question, "Who are you?" very well anymore.

It's not so much a crisis as a state of fuzziness, arising from the simultaneous need to be "acceptable" and to stand out at the same time.

You might be an instrumentalist if...

You listen to a recording of lutenist Julian Bream and tenor Sir Peter Pears and come to the conclusion that the tenor ruined a perfectly good album of Elizabethan lute music.

Shocking . . . er, not really

You scored as Traditional Catholic. You look at the great piety and holiness of the Church before the Second Vatican Council and the decay of belief and practice since then, and see that much of the decline is due to failed reforms based on the "Spirit of the Council". You regret the loss of vast numbers of Religious and Ordained clergy and the widely diverging celebrations of the Mass of Pope Paul VI, which often don't even seem to be Catholic anymore. You are helping to rebuild this past culture in one of the many new Traditional Latin Mass communities or attend Eastern Catholic Divine Liturgy. You seek refuge from the world of pornography, recreational drugs, violence, and materialism. You are an articulate, confident, committed, and intelligent Catholic. But do you support legitimate reform of the Church, and are you willing to submit to the directives of the Second Vatican Council? Will you cooperate responsibly with others who are not part of the Traditional community? http://saint-louis.blogspot.com - Rome of the West Traditional Catholic 95% Neo-Conservative Catholic 60% Radical Catholic 38% New Catholic 38% Evangelical Catholic 5% Lukewarm Catholic 2% Liberal Catholic 0% What is your style of American Catholicism? created with QuizFarm.com

Does this bother anyone else?

Apparently, the Brits are seeing what they can do in the way of monitoring every car on the road.

Surprise

One minute you're a proofreader at one company, and the next, you're an editorial assistant to the senior acquisitions editor at another!

Thank you, Lord.