tuckova

It occurs to me in my second year of self-employment that I am the kind of manager I do not like. Always with the criticism of tiny details, beating myself up for one small error or another, patting myself on the back periodically more because it feels like a necessary exercise in motivation than because I actually think I'm all that and a bagel. As a result I am alternately a sunny employee who focuses on the task (and the general pleasantness of the task) and a sullen, sabotaging layabout who takes too-long lunch breaks and sneers at the boss behind her back. I really care about what I do, and that helps. I do not have to deal with others often, with office politics and watercooler chatter, nepotism favoritism isms in general, and I appreciate that like nobody's business. Working alone and entirely under my own steam is really hard, though, and while I prefer not sleeping to missing deadlines I wish sometimes there was somebody other than me to go "hey nice work." I mean periodically the writers or translators thank me and it brings tears to my eyes every time, because I have created for most of them this idea that I am a perfect machine into which they send their lumps of coal and out of which I pump diamonds, just by virtue of being a ball of tense perfectionism. I mean I don't make myself human in their eyes and they don't either, and most of the time that's okay, but some of the time I forget that in this creation of myself, I am the boss who has to be impressed with me if I want somebody to say I did well. And really impressed, not Stuart Smalley smarming myself. I wish I would give myself the day off sometimes, and not the day off so I can clean but the day off to read a book or something. Maybe if I stop thinking all this nonsense and finish the last paper that's due this week, I'll take tomorrow off. I think I owe it to myself.