Going months at my current job, still fairly new even though I’m freelance, and several months as a freelancer can be like forever — but I feel new to it still. All the more today, because I came to an understanding about office life that I’d never had before.

I normally work in an editing room with a producer or director, but now I’m in an open plan office, using headphones. Isolated and exposed at the same time, it really fucks with my paranoia. But that’s under control, for most of the day.

God, I drink a lot of coffee.

Anyway, I realized that people in the office don’t like to talk to each other about what needs doing. I asked someone for a DVD of a show I’d worked on, and he looked at me like I was a massive burden. Then, at least he took the moment to explain something to me. “Email me,” he said. “That way it’ll be on my list.” Ok, got it.

In the realm of the possible, this isn’t much. But it’s something. After my breakdown a few years ago, I didn’t think work was possible. I would watch people heading off to work and didn’t know the first fucking thing about how to join their ranks ever again. My shrink at the time was not a help, which is practically criminal negligence. Eventually, I stumbled across a job through a crappy little website, and worked my way away from that crappy little company into something better. And it was only today that I realized people would much much rather you don’t ask them for anything face-to-face.