Not Dead

So I was out sick last week and this week I came back to unhappy coworkers and bosses.  Which makes me unhappy... and feel like crap emotionally as well as physically.  They aren't annoyed at me for the things I feel bad about regarding my work performance but the fact that I am insecure makes their criticism hurt even though it is about totally unjust things I shouldn't care about.  My problems with work to a certain extent stem from the fact that I refuse to BE my job.  It's not a career for me it's a job and I want to do a good job but it is not who I am and a refuse to let it ingrain itself on me.  They want me to be the job to love the office to become the identity of administrative assistance.  Fuck all that pedestrian bullshit.  I can't tell them but I will be out of her in a year and in the meantime I will simper and and smile winder than is natural and pretend that this is what I want out of life... but I refuse to believe it. 

In better news, it looks like the Rome Trip is actually a serious plan.  I've wanted to go to Italy for as long as I've known about its existence.  Yes I wish I could take a longer trip and August isn't exactly an ideal month and all that, but if I go on waiting for the perfect time forever I will never see anything and that is what my domestic travels in the last few years have made me realize... less than ideal trips can still be great.  And it's Rome people.  I seriously cannot begin to say how much this is the place.  Other people dream of going to Paris or London but that's never been me.  Ages piled on top of each other, all that history and yet still alive and vibrant.  My Italian professor in college was Roman and when she mentioned Rome there was just something that made you feel like there could be no greater place.  Other people have that feeling for other cities of course.  I've met a lot of New York-philes in my life.  But I think that Rome is something different.  There have been cities and towns and landscapes I've loved myself.  I'm still planning to go back to New Mexico and bask in its mesas and afternoon summer rains and the cliff dwellings and shards of pottery lying everywhere.  Chicago stole my heart unexpectedly.  But it's different.  I've never been to Europe.  Roman roads were built to last and everything points back,  indicators of something great and terrible.  I don't know what it will be like... but I know it is worth finding out.

Also, help me study for me GRE Subject Test for Literature in English.  Ask me about an author or piece of literature from the literary canon (no contemporary stuff please) and I will tell you about he/she/it.  If I don't already know I'll find out.