preraphaelitepunk.com

It turns out that the vice president of our association has no earthly clue what I do. This has come up before as he’s given various visitors the tour of the building, but it’s always been subtler: “Oh, this is Heather, and she, um, works on this book.” Until now, he’s been vague about specifying what exactly it is I do on the book — though you’d think the name badge on my cubicle that says “associate editor” would give him a clue.

But, no, apparently he thinks I’m a typesetter/art cleanup person, and spend my days redrawing graphs.

Maybe it’s just the fact that I feel as if I’ve been doing the Red Queen marathon thing at work since late November, with no end in sight and actually increased intensity for at least the next five weeks; maybe it’s just the fact that today I was reminded that, much as I love my job, it has zero growth prospects because there’s simply nowhere to go; maybe it’s just the fact that I’m constantly the last to know anything around the office and just feel isolated. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that I still, two months later, have not regained full feeling in two of my toes after working at the meeting, which is rather annoying. I’m probably just a little less than strong right now, which is why I’ve been obsessively ruminating on the fact that, as far as the big boss is concerned, everything I kill myself trying to do is pretty much worthless.

I know that, by its nature, editing is supposed to be invisible to the end user. It’s just particularly irksome that he recognizes that there are editors in other sections of our department — indeed, he seems to realize that my immediate boss is an editor — but he seems to think that I’m not one of them.

Oh yeah — and the people to whom he described me as someone who redraws graphs? The freakin’ board of directors.

Thanks so much.