monday punch-in-the-face blogging

allow me to preface today's column with a run-down of what has been my average day for the past two weeks, which have been dedicated to turning a collection of eclectically formatted ms word documents of variable quality into a reputable fifty-six-page academic journal of highly saleable quality:

1. thwack alarm clock with undue force; roll over and proceed to oversleep by approximately forty-five minutes

2. run around apartment, run to car, drive (read: idle/inch for close to an hour along fifteen miles of highway) to work

3. copyedit copyedit copyedit copyedit copyedit copyedit copyedit copyedit copyedit copyedit copyedit copyedit copyedit copyedit copyedit copyedit copyedit copyedit copyedit copyedit copyedit copyedit copyedit copyedit copyedit copyedit copyedit copyedit copyedit copyedit copyedit copyedit copyedit copyedit copyedit copyedit copyedit copyedit copyedit copyedit copyedit copyedit copyedit copyedit copyedit copyedit copyedit copyedit copyedit copyedit copyedit copyedit copyedit copyedit copyedit copyedit

4. lean head against desk for three minutes to prevent retinal detachment and further disintegration of capillary network in left eye

5. proofread proofread proofread proofread proofread proofread proofread proofread proofread proofread proofread proofread proofread proofread proofread proofread proofread proofread proofread proofread proofread proofread proofread proofread proofread proofread proofread proofread proofread proofread proofread proofread proofread proofread proofread proofread proofread proofread proofread proofread proofread proofread proofread proofread proofread proofread proofread proofread proofread

6. become suddenly aware of profound hunger and mild wooziness; wash down b-complex supplement with last of cold coffee; dream distant, laughable dream of hot, healthy meal

7. repeat steps 3 through 5

8. spend drive home thinking of a) the five other journals i am responsible for and have not been able to work on and b) the two new journals i have not yet begun to work on, as i have not received any articles to work on, and which my advertising manager keeps telling people will be coming out in february

9. cry softly into slice of unadorned bread that i am now too sick with hunger to ingest

some words of advice to all fledgling editors: do not take that senior staff position at that small, semi-new publishing company, no matter how flattered you are that they've offered it to someone with as little experience as you have or how much better it seems than the job you had expected to be offered. they are offering it to you because no one with more experience or half a brain would want it. take a job at a larger, better-established company, where you will have a boss. you want a boss. you think that you don't, but you do. you have your entire life to stagger and sweat under a mammoth load of impossible deadlines and inaccurate communications and unreasonable demands; for a year or two, work under someone else who is more responsible for shouldering that load than you are, and learn what you can from that person's mistakes and successes and zombiesque stare and gutteral animal cries of despair. then, when he or she plummets off the winter river bridge, you can assume the position with your eyes wide open and not at all bloodshot or burning; enjoy this ocular nirvana, as you will be experiencing it for perhaps the last time in your life.

i'm tense, is what i'm getting at, and i am ashamed to admit that i haven't always managed to deal with my tension in the most mature or becoming fashion. as a result, this week's hook to the temple is directed right at me.

i pride myself on being one of about fourteen routinely decent drivers in the great, rotary-freckled commonwealth of massachusetts. as a result, i am frequently honked, yelled, rudely gesticulated, and menacingly scowled at. these things happen when i refuse to blow through an intersection after my light has turned red, when i refuse to make an illegal turn when doing so is clearly prohibited by obvious signage, and when i choose not to endanger my life by attempting to gun my tiny car around and in front of a bus that has begun to pull away from the sidewalk. a lot, is what i mean; they happen a lot. and like the endless drone of traffic on a busy street or the shrill, piercing yodel of the upstairs neighbor's faulty smoke alarm, they have become, over time, a thing that my consciousness just barely perceives.

while creeping up mass ave. on thursday morning, i paused at the edge of a break in the median, instead of rolling forward to the car in front of me and blocking the intersection. i always try to do this, and i am always so disappointed when i look behind me after i have moved forward and see that the cars behind me have obliviously and indifferently blocked the intersection that i had so carefully preserved the integrity of. intersection clearance doesn't benefit from the pay-it-forward phenomenon like letting someone pull out into traffic can; it is an instinct that some of us possess and some of us do not. when i am not exhausted and defeated and weak with self-pity, i can accept this and let it roll away from me like beads from the snapping strand of my social awareness. but thursday i was all of those things, so when the driver of the red pick-up behind me tapped once on his horn after i had stopped, i, um . . . *sigh*. i kind of lost my mind.

all alone in my little car, i yelled and flapped my arms and glared into the rearview mirror and made sure that if that son of a bitch in that ugly-ass truck was looking at me, he damned well knew that i was losing my mind. i even stayed right where i was for about thirty extra seconds after the traffic in front of me moved, just to put him in his place, and when he didn't honk again and instead gazed blankly across the median and into the opposite lane, i thought, that's right, bitch; won't make that mistake again.

as i stepped on the gas i glanced behind me one last time, just for closure, and noticed that the truck's left-turn blinker was on. the truck wasn't turning left, though, because a steady stream of traffic was pouring toward it from the opposite direction, blocking its progress. this stream of traffic had come into existence about eight seconds before i had driven away from the intersection. for the several minutes that i had been stopped at the intersection, ranting and raving about the obscene self-interestedness of the driver behind me, the passage had been crystal clear in every direction. i had quite possibly ruined an innocent stranger's entire day.

sorry, dude in pick-up. a hook and a jab to bad, bad juniper pearl, who apparently can't notice anything about anything that isn't in twelve-point font and less than two feet from her face, which, as is its due, is receiving a sound roughing up this very instant.