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1�0�101010�0�1 2004-04-14, 3:23 p.m.

listen to the girl as she takes on half the world


I'm in so-stressed-out-I-could-just-cry mode right now. The book is not going well. I turned in everything back in January; then ensued an eerie silence that I should have known did not bode well. About three weeks ago, my editor called me and told me they'd decided to pull 10 projects (out of 38) because the products and their designs were not "sexy" enough. Which was not exactly part of the original criteria.

I should back up and say that the book I'm writing is on packaging redesigns. And packaging redesigns, people � because I know this shit after six months of working on it � are not inherently sexy. It's packaging. If it has any kind of history, marketing people are reluctant to change it, and when they do, they can't alienate their core customer base, unless their original customers are all dead and they don't have anything to lose. Which is very, very rare.

So yes. Packaging redesigns often consist of things like power tools and sausage links. They are not all austere, sensual, modern, funky British or Nordic designs. They just are not.

Anyway, my editor then proceeded to give me a week and a half to replace all the chapters. Ha. That's about a quarter of the entire project, which by the way, took me four months to complete the first time around.

It takes so long to pull together because these companies are busy, and their archives are in bad shape, and they inevitably need to get clients' permission. So of course, three weeks later, I'm still struggling to get these last couple of projects completed, and shit keeps happening. People keep changing their minds, or clients turn down their requests, you name it. And my editor is getting bitchier by the day. Never mind that she sat on my stuff for two months before even opening it.

On top of this all, I'm super-swamped at work (it's that time of year when everybody suddenly gets off his/her respective ass and feels obligated to perform, which means I'm totally buried), and I mysteriously decided this would be the perfect time to take an introductory graphic design class (no computer, all painting and drawing 1/16" grids by hand), which is hard as fuck, and which I'm getting a miserable grade in despite the fact that I'm working really hard at it.

So what I really want to do is read Jane Austen, watch Lost in Translation for the fourth time, and eat Easter candy tonight, instead of losing yet another night of sleep over all this over-committing and under-rewarding.



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