Monday, May 30, 2005

So, hey, I got a job.

I start as a publishing editor for a safety training and publishing company tomorrow. I'm quite pleased - it's a little but very successful family-owned company, and the people are very nice.

But I'm scared. Not normal first-day-at-a-new-job scared, regardless of what my dad thinks (sorry Dad, but I tried to explain and it didn't make sense to you because you're not NUTZ).

I'm afraid I won't be able to handle the responsibility. Again, not like important-project responsibility (sorry again Dad), which I know I won't be getting for quite some time at this place, but the responsibility of the daily grind, the routine of getting up and getting ready and making it to work on time and just generally being a well-behaved employee.

I feel like I'm going to slip. Like at first there's the nervous tension, keeping me on my toes, but that once I get comfortable, once it's not New and Interesting to get up at 7 in the morning and go to work any more, I'll start losing it, and I'll lose my job. I tell people this and their answer is, well you just have to make yourself do it. And I ask them how. And they just look at me blankly, because I guess for normal, non-broken people, there isn't a 'how' for that sort of thing.

It's like when you ask people how they remember appointments and deadlines and to-do lists and such, and they either keep them in their heads or record them somewhere. And when you ask them how that works, they get confused. When you ask them what you should do if making lists and writing things down doesn't help you, because somehow the words on the paper don't hold their meaning for you, they tend to get puzzled. I can look right at my planner and see an appointment for today, and have it just not seem relevant. I make to-do lists and keep making them over and over in the hope that one of them will convey the urgency of things that need to be done. I've tried every type of calendar and planner and notebook and organizer setup I can think of, and it just doesn't mean anything. And it doesn't help.

And now that I have a chance to have a real grownup life, that realization scares me more than it did when I was in school and struggling to keep track of things, because the stakes are so much higher.

So, assuming anyone out there actually reads this, any suggestions?