The current shape of my life

Today I want to give you an idea of what my life is like so you’ll be able to place my individual entries in the context of the big picture.

I am not an exciting person. I live by myself in a plain, rather messy apartment; I have few friends in the area; I rarely go out and do anything; and I’m very quiet. I don’t usually think of myself as quiet because there’s plenty of activity going on in my mind, but somehow everyone around me ends up talking a lot more than I do. So this blog will not be filled with tales of my adventurous nights out on the town. It will largely be filled with tales of my adventures inside my head.

A typical day starts with me getting up later than I should because I’ve usually stayed up too late the night before, and then kicking myself for being late to work. Fortunately my job doesn’t usually depend on keeping particular hours, and my employer is mostly forgiving. I work as an editorial assistant at a Christian book packager, which is kind of like a publisher except we don’t stock books, market, or sell them. What we do is to help publishers get things done. Sometimes it’s just typesetting or editing; sometimes it’s the whole book. A lot of times we come up with an idea for a book and see if anyone wants to publish it. Then we put it together and hand it off to them.

My job as an editorial assistant isn’t a very typical one. From what I’ve read, most editorial assistants aren’t much more than office assistants with a little proofreading thrown in. Well, we have office assistants for that, and our project managers do a lot of the office work themselves. So I actually get to edit things. Mostly it’s copyediting and proofreading. Once in a while somebody asks me to write something, but I write so slowly that I try to avoid those kinds of assignments. And I also program, which doesn’t sound very editorial, but my programming is all oriented around editing-type functions. I really like the job when I have time to do the work. There’s a lot of variety in the things I get to do, my tasks are interesting, the place is well run, and I like the people. The only problem is that we’re often up against deadlines, and then I hate the job, but I’m learning how to deal with those cases.

In the evenings I try to make myself do whatever practical things need to be done, and then I spend the rest of the time hanging out on the Internet and working on my projects, which usually involve reading and writing. Occasionally I watch a movie or play a video game. And sometimes I talk to my family or friends on the phone. Most of my friendships are long-distance because they’re with people from my high school or college days who are now scattered about the country, and in some cases the world.

On Sunday mornings I go to church. I’ve recently started going to a new one. My plan was to find someplace where I felt like I could plant myself and get involved during the time that I live in this area. I think this is the most likely place for that, but for various reasons I’m finding it difficult to get past being a seat warmer.

My projects and my relationships are what I consider my “real life.” These are the parts of my life that feel the most permanent and fulfilling to me. They reach down to the core of my being and support me and clarify the meaning and direction of my life. So when I have news to share, it will most often be about those. And of course, my projects are the subject of the site as a whole.