365 True Things: 134/Work

Today I finished and sent out two jobs: a proofread and an edit. I'm expecting a new edit in any day now, but for the moment I am blessedly unburdened by work.

I've had three "real" jobs in my life: once when I was between high school and college, a secretarial temp job in Century City—in what kind of office, I don't even remember. That was just a couple of months, so hardly counts.

After college, I spent a year working as a secretary for three professors in UCLA's Molecular Biology Institute. I sat in the front half of biochemist John Jordan's office, and he regularly gave me stuff to type up: papers for submission to journals, class syllabi, exams. He also shared his wry humor with me, and the occasional cup of tea accompanied by cookies and delicious chat about art and life. I was very fond of Dr. Jordan. Biologist George Fareed occasionally gave me a journal article to type up, and was always pleasant. And the third professor—ol' Dr. Whatsisname—I never saw except in passing in the hallway. It was a pretty easy (if boring) job.

My third job came after I'd finished my PhD, with a focus, for my dissertation, on elementary school textbook maps. When David took a postdoc position in Chicago, I applied to work at Ligature, a textbook development house in the Loop. Theoretically, I was hired to help them develop the map program for a textbook series. I was excited about that. However, the textbook adoption cycle was at the mathematics stage, not yet at social studies, so I actually spent my year there thinking up math problems for high school students who hate math. My favorite problem had to do with measuring pieces of carpet to soundproof a drum practice room, in honor of my good friend Kathi, a drummer. The specific lesson was about adding and subtracting fractions, if I recall correctly.

And that's it! The last three and a half decades, I've freelanced, mostly editing books for scholarly presses. I wish I had a list of all the books I've worked on; it would be hundreds of titles long, on everything from Roman calendars to Stravinsky to lizards to Malcolm X to wine atlases to avant-garde cinema—and so much more. It hasn't made me rich, except possibly intellectually, but it gives me plenty of freedom—and that's more important to me than money and "success" (however defined).

One beauty of freelancing is that, although I work very hard when I do have work in, when I don't have work, I can relax and pursue my own interests. The hard thing about freelancing is the lack of structure: when I have work in, it's obvious what I have to do each day. When I don't have work in, it's easy for me to fritter away my time.

So now that I'm at an in-between point with my work, it's a good opportunity to take stock. My plan for the next job—a big one, a 1,000-plus-page textbook on Judaism, on a fast schedule—is to use the mornings for myself, while the afternoons go to work. I think a list will come in handy, to keep myself organized. A sort of self-check-in to remind myself of my priorities, at the very least.

I hope I have a few days of breathing space before that new job comes in. Fingers crossed.