I have recently been considering "retirement." Of course I couldn't afford to live on the pension that would be provided (although I could have with style back in 1970). I never intended to stay this long in any job. It's as if I looked away, and then turned back, and found myself in some kind of mainstream method, if not attitude, toward LIFE and CAREER. Please, I am not an administrative professional! Go to someone else! I know nothing but the Byzantine ways of my particular academic institutional employer. This is what I have "learned" during the last eleven years: how to fill out the variety of forms considered important by various offices, and how to plead and beg for forgiveness if those forms are not received on time or filled out incorrectly. Kafka would be proud. Oh, and I've also learned to consider interruptions an essential part of the job. My office is public, really, so I have no privacy. My privacy consists in what I don't reveal. And since I'm very forthcoming if a human being is in my presence, I reveal too much, always. It's not that I'm everyone's friend, it's that I feel obligated to everyone. Especially my boss. She's an accomplished, beautiful, liberated woman. Why does she need me? Someday, we'll both find out.
