all of the imperfections.

I fell asleep in the middle of the night, my breath slightly audible on the pillow, my stomach growling, my voice reduced to a whisper.

I woke up smiling.

parting thoughts.

I'm taking a break from doing all of my favorite things. Now that my parents left town, I have time to sit down, make myself some vegan pizza, do some yoga in the living room, read secondary sources for my thesis, listen to Simon & Garfunkel, and maybe catch some Weeds later.

Ever since Saturday night, I have been incredibly pensive. I am finding it really easy to get lost in a second and have that second turn into 30 minutes (which is why work felt like it only lasted about 3 hours today). I sat on my back porch earlier this evening after running 2 miles, and I lit up a cigarette. I thought of how ironic that was. Especially since I rarely smoke. I let the tip burn for a second, just watched as the wind turned it red, then died down, and a few pieces turned to ash. Then I just sat and thought about all of the associations I make with cigarettes: the parties and the mistakes and my voice disappearing in Ireland and nights full of too-soon-to-be-mature laughter. Maybe a quiet front porch with a few semi-close friends. Or maybe a rooftop in Berkeley with Saleh, quiet and serene as the sun sets.

What I don't understand is how someone intelligent can begin to associate something that is slowly killing her with all of these fond college-cliche memories.

I didn't kill the cigarette. I smoked the whole thing. But I watched most of it disappear to ash. I watched most of it float away into nothing.

That's how memory is sometimes. There is no space for it after a while, or you make new space for it. You begin to do things you know are not right and you don't even know why you're doing them anymore. You go from one second to the next, not remembering his face or hers. Forgetting about someone who means the world to you in an instant for someone else more exciting.

I am not addicted to cigarettes. I know, because I realized in watching it drift away that I can't remember what it feels like to kiss his lips, to hold his hand.

let's go outside.

This has been a wonderful weekend, completely liberating from all of the stresses of work.

But now the week begins again, and I'd like to close out this fabulous weekend with a self-indulgent, confused, personal saga of all the ways I need to figure my life out:

I don't know what else I can say here except that I am sure I've made a lot of trouble for myself in my life. I'm still debating whether or not I should forget about relationships and become asexual for a while. I was literally weighing the pros and cons of becoming a nun today. One of the plusses was a lifetime devotion to one individual who will always be faithful and loving and help you discover a higher purpose. One of the minuses was that black washes me out.

And I still go back and forth on my job, on publishing, on Ireland, on my future. I need a reason to wake up on Monday morning other than the fact that I just bought a new box of cereal I'm excited to try. What job can ever do that for me? When will I find my niche?

The other day at work, I realized that I would like everything a lot more if I were just closer with the people that I work with. I've had a hard time bonding with people for some reason. I think it's because our personalities just don't mesh as well as they should. I've only found two people I truly enjoy being around, and one of them is out of the office every other day and runs an entire division, and I never get to see him. The other is on a two-week vacation. But even despite these two people, what's the point in getting to know me? I'm leaving in four weeks, so why should anyone care? Or at least that's the vibe that I get. It's probably a defense mechanism.

I'm not the kind of person who gets along with everyone. I'm actually very hard to please. When I'm feeling lonely, I'm really good at being something I'm not and pretending that I enjoy the people I'm around. The problem with this is that I am about 98% sure this version of me is insanely boring. And it's what a lot of people around me seem like, and I hate that. But when I meet the right person, who understands and shares my eccentricities, who will laugh with me about stupid stuff, who won't stick to one-subject conversations, who will go shopping with me, and try new things with me, and not be afraid of having a three-martini lunch and eating vegan, well then I'll know I'm in the right place. And when I meet the right person, I too become the right version of myself, and then I'm much more fun to be around.

For now, I think the money makes this internship worth it. In the future, it is much more about the type of books the company publishes, the senses of humor of my colleagues, the size of the company, the free time I am given, the creativity.

I'm not happy with this job. I won't lie. And that really upsets me because I had such high expectations, and I still pretend to have them with everyone I work with. I'm not going to blame it on publishing. I'm going to blame it on the academic audience and the city of San Francisco. I've always thought I belonged more in New York. I hate how relaxed and laid back everything is here. It makes my work feel unimportant.

So here I am. I'd ask for help, but this one I have to figure out all on my own.

interview with a senior acquisitions editor.

Today, I interviewed the senior acquisitions editor for higher education. We walked through the breezy, gray San Francisco morning through an abandoned parking lot. At the end, the parking lot turns into a littered alleyway off of Fifth Street. At the end of the alleyway stands this chichi international-style cafe. Even though the outside was dirty, the inside was abuzz with professionals and hipsters and coffee enthusiasts, sharing a cappuccino-flavored morning over a free issue of the New York Times. I ordered the "New Orleans Style Iced Coffee," but it was a tough decision between that and the "Kyoto Style." The editor (who will be unnamed because I didn't ask for his permission to publish this) ordered a mini brioche that came wrapped in a post-consumer product coffee filter and a hot chocolate topped with whip cream floating in the shape of a flower. The place was the essence of San Francisco foodie culture, and the perfect place to get to know someone who embodied so much of that easy going, mellow, but slightly neurotic San Francisco charm.

I have typed up my thoughts after the interview for anyone interested. These are not direct quotations, but rather what I gathered during our hour-long conversation. I had the questions pre-written and then I filled them out from memory.

Here you go, for anyone lost on what area of publishing may suit them best.

Enjoy:

What is a typical work day like?

Frantic, busy, doing many different types of work

What do you spend most of your time doing?

He spends more time on business stuff than he thought he would – budgets and the like, but he also spends a lot of time on the phone with authors and delegating developmental tasks.

Why do you like your job? What is the best part of your job?

Chatting, being able to hear ideas from intelligent people and shaping those ideas. Seeing the big picture.

What are your yearly, weekly, monthly goals? What skills do you need to meet them?

He has business goals, but these are part of the smaller picture that he arrives at easily when he embraces the larger goal of publishing brilliant books.

What do you wish you could change about your job? What are your least favorite things you have to do?

Business stuff can be exhausting so you forget sometimes whether you’ve worked on anything developmental, which can be disappointing because you forget about your creativity and start to think of everything as items to be checked off your “to do” list. You usually have to delegate the more creative tasks when you are at the top of the ladder. One of the biggest disappoints he faces is when an intelligent, culture changing book that receives great reviews never sells, and then when a terrible book “sells like hotcakes” because it fills some kind of gap in the market. This can be frustrating.

Do you find your job stressful? Relaxing? Exciting? Fun? Why?

It can be all of the above. Publishing is “crazy making.” Sometimes the prospect of all of the work can be so overwhelming (where do you start!? – edit a 500-page manuscript, 10 calls to make…) and other times it can be so freeing and flexible because you can do so many different types of work at once, which is satisfying in its diversity.

What kind of education did you get? Is it beneficial to get an MA, MS in Publishing, PhD, MBA? What sort of courses would you recommend (which are desirable and which are necessary)?

He has taken the publishing course, but you should wait until your employer pays for it. It is mostly for the networking, if you want to break into publishing, or if you want to switch employers. It can be a great door-opener. Some of the classes are interesting and can give you a taste for all of the different kinds of publishing and jobs within publishing, which is useful. He doesn’t know how helpful the degree would be though, and advanced degrees are not necessary because you learn by doing in publishing.

Academic publishing

It has become much more of a business, more about the bottom line rather than publishing great ideas (though it is about that too). This is because budgets are being cut. These publishers used to be subsidized by the universities, but more and more they have to support themselves. Nonetheless, there is still some wonderful scholarship coming from academic presses. Like fiction, this type of publishing can involve a lot of “ego” from authors who may be hard to work with.

What was your previous work experience? Have you always been in publishing?

He has spent his entire publishing career at this one publishing house and loved it (“10 years that have felt like 15 though,” he says). He left publishing for a few years to work as an editor for a company and received a pay increase of 50%, but he says he missed publishing so much that he took a huge pay cut and came back to where he started with a higher position (associate editor). He needs that interaction between author and editor, that interchange of ideas. Otherwise, an editorial job can be stifling and lonely.

What are your long-range goals? Do you think you will always be here?

Yes. He has been here for 10 years, and it is the perfect job for him.

Are there any other types of book publishing you would be interested in shifting into?

No, he wouldn’t personally. But for me, academic presses and fiction publishers would be an interesting shift in careers. You can transfer between publishers once you become more well established. He suggested working for this house here and then transferring to the office outside of New York, and from there working my way up and shifting to an office in Manhattan and being able to support myself there.

Why are your skills well-suited for the type of editorial work you do? What sort of traits does a person need to be a good acquisitions editor?

As an acquisitions editor, he gets to chit chat all day long, which he loves to do. He has also been called a “cheerleader” and he says that being a good cheerleader is really what a good acquisitions editor needs to be. You need to be able to tell authors to “keep going!” “you’re doing great!” or “don’t do this so much.”

Do you feel that you are able to exercise your creativity in your job?

Not as much as you may think. Publishing (at least at a more academic-type press) is an ego-less profession. You may slave away at a manuscript developing it and never see royalties or even get recognition on the acknowledgements page. Only the publisher then would ever know that you developed the manuscript and made it what it was. But there is a flip side to this, the best editors (or at least the most famous) are those that have interjected their own theories, thoughts, and ideas into an author’s manuscript and given it the punch it needed. These editors often are recognized for their skill and precision (ie Clay Felker)

Are you optimistic about the future of publishing? About this company’s future?

This company will be safe from any changes in publishing because it supports academia, and academics are always looking for new information. Even if the form changes (ie digital books, e-books, Kindle-like hardware), the idea of the book will never be erased in this arena. The same is true of academic presses. However, he thinks that in academia, most customers (like him) prefer the paper format and they realize that there is a difference between something that goes up online and can be edited quickly and something that has been committed to paper. As for fiction, things are a little more up in the air, but even with reports of people no longer reading, this is simply not true. Many people continue to read and authors continue to sell books. These books may often be trash, but there is still hope. So the narrative is what is important, the format is a little more flexible, especially in fiction. Book publishing, at least, will not die anytime in the near future.

Do you think this is a flexible industry? Is it a good industry if you want to see a lot of the world?

Publishing is great because you can pretty much take any entry-level job and later train to be anything you want. For example, you can go into marketing or sales and still become a developmental editor. Or you can go from associate editor to acquisitions, though sales to acquisitions is usually more common. He does travel a lot for conferences, where he is able to interact with customers, authors, and fellow editors and publishing houses.

Is there any other area of publishing you are interested in? Who else would you suggest I talk to?

For me, developmental editing (esp. freelance) sounds like a good niche. Also, production. Probably not acquisitions because I can move back and forth from feeling super social to feeling like I want to be left alone. In general, though, this balance is hard to strike in publishing, and everyone has to find it for themselves. He often works from home, but he also often spends time in the office, trying to figure out in which environment he is most productive.

Is there anything you wish you had known when you were starting out that you found out on the job?

There can certainly be some frustrating times. You will work on a dozen manuscripts that you don’t care anything about, but you do it to get experience and to work up to the one manuscript that truly makes a difference. Stick with it and you will make it where you want to be.

Are finances an issue for entry-level jobs?

Yes, they certainly can be. Publishing is able to pay so little because publishers know that this is what English majors want to do, and they will do it for nothing if they are just given the opportunity [as a side note, I really think there should be an editorial union that demands higher wages for entry-level workers. You can’t live in New York on a $27K/year salary unless you live in Brooklyn and are willing to take your life into your own hands and risk being mugged every night that you go home—this is especially frightening because many editorial assistants are women]. Many editorial assistants live with 4 or more roommates and struggle with finances, but eventually they work themselves up to better wages. If you were to stay in San Francisco, it may be easier to afford living, but New York is where everything is. It is a conundrum and explains why many entry-level publishing people are still supported by their parents. Really, only the most notorious editors ever make a lot of money, but it is not impossible to make a lot, just an incredible challenge.

And I like challenges. :)

taking the 405.

And now for a photo-heavy post. Everybody loves those.

I'm taking care of Sammy's house for her while she is in Guatemala the next two weeks. She asked me to upload some of her London photos from last summer. Among them, I found this gem. It was taken with a disposable camera, quite impressive.

I am also looking into buying vintage glasses frames. Most people know I'm a glasses freak. I keep my glasses pristine and obsess about them a lot. Getting a new pair of glasses is like assuming a new, fresh, growing version of myself. I'm not ready for a new prescription yet, but I really want clearish whitish frames, so that I don't have such a striking contrast between my white white skin and black frames anymore. Here's what I'm lookin' at. I'm so in love with so many, but what I really need is a monogamous relationship.

In order of preference, unless you think otherwise:


These are YSL and I can't afford them.


I love the detail on the top. I'm just not sure if it would cover my eyebrows, which would just look weird.

These COULD be cute, but I've never tried anything like them. I also like tortoiseshell because It would still add color, but not be stark.


The same goes for these.

beauty in everything.

I somehow got roped into writing a column for the paper this week even though there is nothing I'd rather do than watch Flight of the Conchords on DVD and stare at Bret's beautiful lips for three hours. But that's not the point of this post.

On a long car trip, I was listening to the audio version of Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs (a GENIUS title for a book by the way). Chuck Klosterman is a pop culture analyst, looking sardonically at the ways our unconscious desires are shaped by the media. He identified the Woody Allen complex, which many women have struggled with in their relationships (including myself).

"He [Woody] makes people assume there is something profound about having a relationship based on witty conversation and intellectual discourse. There isn’t. It’s just another gimmick, and it’s no different than wanting to be with someone because they’re thin or rich or the former lead singer of Whiskeytown. And, it actually might be worse, because an intellectual relationship isn’t real at all. My witty banter and cerebral discourse is always completely contrived."

But what I really wanted to argue here is that men do the exact same fucking thing that women do when it comes to this stuff. If women don't preserve their beauty (or increase it), if they start to feel like their partner is not fitting their mold of an independent, pristine, well balanced, third wave feminist woman, they aren't satisfied. They see women in movies (Kristen Bell, Jennifer Aniston, Angelina Jolie), and if women aren't like these role models, they're just as unsatisfied as women are when they realize their partner isn't John Cusak, Jason Lee from Mallrats, Bret McKenzie, George Clooney, Ferris Bueller. So the media has completely ruined love. I think at the end of the day, either the media needs to portray more realistic relationships, or we need to finally decide that it's nature, not nurture, and just go with our biological instincts. Otherwise, we will never be happy in our relationships. It just angers me when men think they are an exception to this and play that "women are evil and only like bad guys" bullshit. It's a sad excuse for a lack of self confidence. If these men ever actually entered into a serious relationship, they'd realize that they wanted the exact same ridiculous and impossible things women want. And it's not our faults. I blame Disney, but I think Woody Allen and Kevin Smith and You've Got Mail can all be blamed just as easily.

piano keys in the mirror.

Beginning to feel a bit deserted. Maybe things will change when the city gets smaller. If you're not dependent, who are you? If you're not in love, what is your name? Days so long they get colder. Nights loud with crickets scratching and children sleeping and stars bursting open and letting their white vanilla soy milk fill the black sky. Stripes on stripes. I regret the day I met him. I regret losing my self confidence. And in those days long closed, we'd fly down hills on skateboards and laugh when we fell. Let's laugh when we fall down. Let's fly so fast we forget where we are. Those whispers in the back of the car, those awkward fumbling movements when you said "never change." Never change, he said. Listen to you. Why, is it because? Close the door, it's cold outside. Close it and lock it and leave. He'll never come back anyway. Torn in pieces, I lied to the other one. That's how I see it. This one cost me money, cost me my job and my conscience. I never really felt much, just a substitute for a heart where my first and third had been. Well, my fourth and second. Market and sixth. A long road I walk around the block. I just want a glass without a label. I just want a house with a home. I just want you to change everything and be who I want you to be. I just want everyone else to close the door and lock it and wave good-bye and be who they're not. Silver, gold. I'm mixing them all up now. It's all gone, and while I miss it, I also realize how unnecessary it may be. My body is mine alone. My America, my Newfoundland. Even John Donne couldn't change my mind. I'm filling the space with poetry and theory. I'm filling the space with secondhand experience. If it separates, just let it go.

introduction.

I like to take my media with a grain of salt, but I've seen just 30 million more commercials and advertisements flaunting tall, stick-thin, bright-eyed, tan-skinned models than is good for my health.

To be a woman in America is to never be satisfied. There is always a subconscious checklist of what you'd like to change if only you had the money, if only you could be born again. It doesn't matter if someone loves you. It doesn't even matter if you love yourself. There are all of these contradicting messages: love who you are, but buy this moisturizer. be whoever you want to be, but get these new Balenciaga heels.

Do men go to bed at night hoping that it will get better in the morning?

And so maybe if I just go away for a while, escape the country, all of it will just go away. Because even if I believed completely in myself and who I was (which I think I do a pretty good job of), there would be men and women who could pick out flaws and reasons for me not to succeed. Look at Hillary Clinton.

So my solution is not to escape, but for women to stop antagonizing each other and pushing each other to the edge of insanity, expecting perfection and balance. I think that, together, we could probably shield ourselves from all the media's poking and prodding.

endless commercials.

Sam and I took a walk around Burlingame today. We walked around, spent some time in the freezer section at Walgreen's, bought some books at the independent bookstore.

As we were headed back, one, then two, then three firetrucks sped toward the grocery store. Then an ambulance raced behind them until they all stopped in the parking lot. Intrigued (we truly belong here sometimes), we turned with the excuse that we'd buy some spinach dip and a baguette. We walked inside and followed a stray firefighter. He headed to the dairy section, where several men fully dressed from head to toe in uniform picked up cartons of dairy and soy milk.

We asked the guy at the check-out counter what had happened (who we knew from high school, typical Burlingame occurrence). Without hesitation, he replied: "a small electrical short in the dairy aisle."

Three firetrucks. One ambulance. A small electrical shortage.

There are some days where it is just oh so clear that I need to get out of here.

sonatina.

It seems that most people I work with didn't mean to go into publishing, it just kind of fell into their laps. For me, it's been a path I've been following since high school, so being around all of these people makes me feel a little limited in my scope on things.

There are artists, writers, people interested in non-profit work, scientists.

So what makes one choose this career path?

Yes, I have a lot of things I'd like to be in my life. I'm slowly deciding this is not where I want to end up. So, interestingly, I'm doing the reverse of what these people are doing. Very interesting.

lotsa listos.

I think I'm learning a lot about myself at this internship. First of all, I have a problem with execution. I come up with lots of ideas, questions, projects, but somehow they never get created, asked, or finished. So my goals for my internship are now (as of this afternoon at 3pm when I ran out of projects to work on):

• Pitch a project to the acquisitions editor for higher ed - hope to god I don't sound like a naive, newb idiot
• Informational interviews with several people
• Ask at least one question at each section meeting I go to
  
• Ask for more projects. Beg. Beg for more projects.
  

I have never worked 9-5 in my life, and it's a special sort of realization. It feels a bit empty, yes. It also feels easy. Sometimes too easy (thus, the wanting of the PhD). Other times, it's quite freeing. Mostly, it's making me realize several things:

• I am going to have to live abroad after I graduate. I will never forgive myself if I go straight to working and never stop. Either this means I need to take some time to myself right away or work a job for a while, saving money until I have enough to live for a while without a visa.
  
• I am going to need to go to graduate school at some point. I refuse to be just okay at what I do. It makes me toss and turn at night. I've always tried to put myself near the top: the top of the gradebook, the top of the editor list, the top of the other interviewees, the top of the other interns, the top of the human pyramid once on the high school football field, that top I like with the halter straps (it's quite flattering). I was reading a column in the Chronicle of Higher Education today about a professor sick of his colleagues fighting even though none of them were "academic superstars." How can you just be a professor without being an academic superstar? How can you live with yourself if you aren't constantly putting out great ideas? Just okay ones? Just the status quo? Just agreeing, disagreeing politely? Thus, I need to be able to go back to school, to advance myself. MBA, MA, PhD, MS. I don't care.
  
• Being a great intern means taking initiative. That's ALL it means. But that isn't easy. It's a daily, hourly, minutely challenge: you against your conscience, the short-term against the long-term.
  
• What's the point of being a great intern? It's such a low-level position, who the hell cares?
  
• Oh. I guess I do every other minute.
  
• I have to go shopping on my lunch break. It's quite nice.
  
• I have to get away from home for a while.
  

A man was gunned down in front of my office today. Afterwards, my co-worker peaked into my cubicle and said, "Welcome to the Tenderloin."