identify the things that are sucking the life out of me and eliminate them

sometimes i really like reviewers: “Yet, in spite of these real strengths, I am unmoved by the submission [...]. I cannot shake the impression that all of this effort [...] was deployed in pursuit of small, narrow problems. [...] The finding is unremarkable and tedious, in my opinion.”

_{yes, yes, yes.}

editing this blimming paper word by word by word.

For example, “Many teachers falsely think that it is not correct to say that metacognition training for the sack of itself can be seen as not up-to-date.”

“Luckily” she’s left the German in for that bit, otherwise I wouldn’t have even the faintest idea what’s going on.

_{now where did i put my up-to-date sack (of itself)? am considering inserting head.}

my very easy, four-letter surname right. this woman is offering me 100+ pages to translate and i can’t take her seriously because she’s added a superfluous letter twice. i’m not going to translate for people who can’t read.

when my so-called colleagues are planning to send me some work by the way they greet vs. semi-ignore me in the corridor. happened again today.

bare move of head, grunt: no work coming up.
effusive movement of hand, smile: work in pipeline.

jeez, that’s so depressing.

of the bloody book arrived today. i looked at one for a minute or so, then put it away again. i thought it would make me feel like a proper person. i was wrong.

_{what the feck was i doing wasting 2 years of my life on that shite? i mean really. what the feck? and it’s just the biggest example of … well, everything really. feck it. damn.}

is now giving me all sorts of imaginary illnesses. please please please someone give me a kick up the arse to really make a change for the better. please.

about my stupid work and people ask me what i would really like to do, i say i want to work for the river police. i (doubtless mistakenly) imagine it to be an all-day picnic with the occasional bit of criminalistic excitement and boat chases.

i just had the best idea ever, thanks to World Book Club and Patricia Cornwell. clearly, what i need to do is write a best selling series of novels about a river policewoman—and get invited to ride around with them doing research. genius!

edit: my heroine will be called Alcyone Vellutata.

“The recent history in Berlin has many aspects and different ways of handling. [...] The actual wow of the German movie “Good-bye Lenin” made this kind of mood clear to an international public.”

can anyone eliminate this fuckery for me?

i just saw this headline on the BBC website and thought it was a story about me. except that i’m not German. yet.

and this i define as lack of respect:

checked someone’s powerpoints for a presentation they were doing in chile. it would have been too much palaver to write an invoice, but i was promised a present. that’s nice, i thought. the present eventually turned out to be a bottle of wine, imported and bottled by a german company. maybe i was missing something, but i’m pretty sure it wasn’t a joke and that i was really supposed to think he’d brought it back specially from chile. so after a hard day’s soul-draining editing (did i ever mention that editing is my dementor?) and missing our evening drinks on the seaside balcony, i thought i’d treat myself to a glass. and the taste was such (did i ever mention that “gift” is german for “poison”?) that i thought i’d look it up on the internet. a bottle costs 1.39 euros from plus.

is that or is that not a lack of respect?

i am forgetting the sea already.