I Wish the Publishing Company I Worked for was ANYTHING like this

Sorry, I'm so behind, but when you're stuck at home with a bum back and a bad mood, sometimes challenges are just, well...too challenging.

Sometime overnight I my spine spun out of alignment, and I woke up feeling like Gregor Samsa, a disgusting, paralyzed monster bug. I figured out how to get dressed: very carefully. Then I wandered out into the rain and made my way to work, where I realized I might not actually be able to soldier it through the pain. So, I came home.

It's rainy. I'm depressed. I hurt. This kind of thing makes me feel old. Oh, sh*t, it's my birthday next week. I AM old.

So, I'm laying flat on my back on the cold wood floor with my cat (the perpetual reminder of my old lady singleton-ness) staring at me like he can't wait for me to give up the ghost and become kitty vittle. Did I mention, it's raining, and I feel sorry for myself? Poor me!

I give up. I'm just going to become a shut-in and watch anime until those few gray hairs turn into all gray hair. I'll be a Hikikomori, and I'll start with: Sekai Ichi Hatsukoi - World's Greatest First Love

It's one of my favorite kind of anime.

1) It's Yaoi. It's about the gays, but gay in the most kind of androgynous kind of gay way, you know the way ladies write gay stuff for ladies. I'm just going to write the word gay one more time for good measure.

2) It's an office type drama. Have I mentioned I LOVE those. There is something interesting to me about the blurred lines between work and life in anime. Everything is SO important, and everyone vows to try SO hard and do their best and so forth. The work becomes a character in and of itself.

3) It's a publishing company, specifically a Shoujo manga publishing company. The anime ends up being a little meta taking the viewer through the ins and outs of a part of its own industry. I wish I could be a manga editor, especially at a place like that!

4) It's not stuck on one set of characters. Yes, there is one main couple, but there are intervening episodes that introduce the discrete story lines of other folks in the company.

5) Totally escapist. Can I get a witness! What! What! Truly, I feel like a poopsickle. My back hurts. I'm going to die lonely decrepit and arthritic with only a cat to usher me over to the other side. My novel is progressing about as fast as a glacier (I don't even know what that metaphor means). I think if I don't suddenly become Jonathan Franzen or Steig Larsson or write the New The Secret, I might as well resolve myself to eating Ramen for every meal for every day for the rest of my life and burying my head in the sands of shame for not actually doing anything with my (society tells me) selfishly acquired MFA. BUT AT LEAST I HAVE ANIME.

And a good day to you, dear readers.