unstuck

i'm reading this book about writer's block right now called 'unstuck.' i'm too lazy to go and look for the author's name. it's ok but it really annoys me in writing books when the author starts getting into these long, detailed narratives about their formative years. like anyone really cares about that. it's not going to help anyone get to writing better and more often. it's just boring filler. there's no way that reading about an author's college admissions essay is going to help me overcome the blocks to my own writing. that's the only real reason i'm reading. if i wanted to know about the author's life, i'd just go buy their biography. it takes so long to get to the point that the book ends up putting me to sleep.

i bought the book after starting this chapter in it called 'thinking small' or something like that. i tend to not do that and think i have to have some huge, life changing event happening in order to make my life worth writing about. even though i know there are thousands of little things out there that can be interesting if explored through creatively writing and focusing on them. that's my issue. i feel like my life has nothing spectacular in it worth writing about, and a good writing book points out all those topics that could easily be overlooked or that you might not ever consider. this book is too concerned with getting into all the reasons why you might be having writer's block, and not much about how to get past it. though i'm still in the beginning so who knows, maybe it gets better.

i worked another 9 hour day today. i noticed that at work there seems to be some gender discrimination going on. the only other female in our analyst group (my assistant who isn't an analyst yet) and i are the ones who sit next to the rest of the reps who basically do nothing all day but chat with eachother, so we suffer to get our work done in a noisy environment, meanwhile, all the other (male) analysts sit on our other side and back towards the wall where it's nice and quiet. this week is usually the busiest and craziest because it's towards the end of the month, yet the director feels its a good time to give MY assistant an additional report on top of all the others she has to do for me, and despite the fact that she is not in the office every thursday because she has jury duty. so i'm noticing that while her and i are coming in early and staying late every day just trying to keep up with our work, some of the male analysts are standing around talking, going out for long cigarette breaks, and even sending cropped photos that are supposed to be humorous to the whole department.

there is this one analyst who enjoys cropping in our fellow employees into movie poster pictures and stuff. it's really stupid. and i'm thinking, this is how much time he has on his hands? i asked the director and my supervisor if there was any way that another rep could help out my assistant so that she wouldn't have to do an additional long report when she's already so busy, and has to help me. and they said they wanted the analyst group to handle it because we have a lower margin of error than the data entry reps and i'm like what the hell? are we THE ONLY TWO analysts in the analyst group? or did you forget those 3 or 4 guys in the back who have nothing to do but goof off while we are busting our asses trying to meet our deadlines??? it's so frustrating!! i of course emailed my supervisor and mentioned this interesting disparity between my assistant getting extra work when no one else in the analyst group seems all that busy and we are obviously overloaded and could use some help, and he ignores it. real nice.

can't wait to watch project runway tonight, i need to get out of my head for a while.