publish or perish

i'm at work. i should say i'm not working. clearly. but i'm here, body in chair, and that seems to count for something.

i work in publishing. an offshoot of the publishing world, really. periphery. what we call *scholarly* publishing. none of the glitz and glam of the trade world - the randomly housed, vintage-clad, penguin-suited trust-funded martini-swilling world that helen fielding pens. here it's all skimping and scrounging. mounting press releases that nobody reads. i sometimes comfort myself that i get paid better than some of my compatriots in that swisher world, but the sheer blandness of my job can get me down.

am contemplating a career change. or a shift. but what the hell to do? i'm a compulsive non-finisher of degrees, having only managed the BA, and that only because i didn't know yet that i didn't *have* to finish it. started a PhD, backed down, got lost, thot maybe it was on account of i leapfrogged over the MA that i bailed on the big DR, so went back to do that. guess what? 'taint done that either. i used to pin it on being part of the cohort cursed by being born in the early 70s, the aimless child of the not-quite-boomer generation. now i'm not too sure. i'm beginning to think that i'm just really freaking lazy. lately the thot of doing *this* - this WORK thing - for another 33 years sees me sliding into a trough of despair.