Writing a book is hard

Thank you everyone for the lovely messages and support.

You are wonderful.

I'm currently working for a fledging company that publishes school books and co-directing the English book for beginners. This is complicated because 1° I didn't learn English at school and 2° working is complicated and 3°I'm working for very bureaucratic people and I'm a bohemian freelancer who needs hours off to help tidy up apartments, empty houses and other fun tasks.

My partner is called F, and he is sweet, befuddled and very, very clever. He is learning Persian and spends his time comparing English to Persian (NO) and telling me amusing adventures of his youth. I like him. It's fun going to his apartment and working on the book, imagining the drawings and the dialogues and which accent to pick, AMerican or British? And which American? Which British? Lots of questions like that. It's great.

When we first met, he shook my hand, pecked my cheek and told me earnestly :"Don't fall for me, because I'm tired of girls falling for me." If you had told me I would come to be very fond of him then, I would have rolled my eyes.
But I am very fond of him. He's such an old romantic, always falling for the wrong guy, always depressed about love, and then incredibly perky and stimulating.

I'm very grateful to him for bearing up with my moods.

Can't wait to finish our preliminary work. How fun will it be to see the finished product!

Still looking for a title. It seems that every thing is taken: Connect, Listen up, New Springs, Apple Pie, Enjoy, Teamwork, Borders, New Borders, Discover...

If anyone has a snazzy suggestion, I'll send you delicious French sausage. Now if that isn't tempting...

Split identity

I'm reading a wonderful book for history nerds, called Masculinity and the middle-class Home in Victorian England. Part of why this book is so much fun is that the anxiety linked to the place of man in his family, his role as father and husband and his socio-economic rights is still very much a topic of thought and controversy.

I could quote the entire book, from the description of marital tasks, sexual mores and club culture in 19th century England, but this passage held particular meaning for me.

"The more alienating the employment, the greater the tendency to conduct life in separate compartments. The classic literary expression of this split comes in William Hale White's autobiographical novel, which draws on his own experience as a junior employee at Somerset House in the 1850s.

I cut off my office life from my life at home so completely that I was two selves. I was a great comfort to me to think the moment the clock struck seven that my second self died, and that my first self suffered nothing by having anything to do with it..."

Now that I have started working in a office, I understand this so completely. I feel like a split personality. It's the language thing as well. In German, I'm demure. I know no swear words. In French I am...different. Articulate. I love swearing in English. It doesn't feel real. So at the office I'm a slightly stupid, nice girl. At home I become me again.

I miss my family and friends most of all when I transition back to myself.

All in all, I wonder how many of us change drastically in the work place.