I turned in my Egypt travel-guide work at 11:54pm on Friday night–on time by the letter of the law, if not the spirit.

That may seem a little desperate to you, but it felt wildly professional to me.

In fact, I feel like I’ve turned a corner toward a new and responsible me. Not that I was ever really flaky about my work before, exactly, but this was the first time in a long time I actually didn’t mind doing it, and in fact came out at the end not feeling both murderous and suicidal.

But I have such a cool job, I can hear you saying. How can being a globally published author of internationally recognized name-brand travel guides, who gets to galavant all over the planet, make you feel like ripping yourself and other people limb from limb?

Look, have you ever tried to keep track of 8,137 pieces of paper at once, plus try to deconstruct your own handwriting from two months ago, plus wonder where you might’ve written the price of a shwarma sandwich at the most important shwarma-sandwich place in town? Because you wouldn’t have not written it down, right? Uh, right…? And you have to think of yet another way to say ‘pleasant and clean’.

Also, have you ever tried to appear at all times as though you don’t actually have any work to do? Being a freelancer, as I’ve done for seven years, means you carry the weight of the cubicle-dwelling world on your shoulders. Everyone looks at you as a paragon of freedom and happy-go-luckiness.

Back when I first started freelancing, it was easy to live up to the ideal–I didn’t actually have any work to do. I occasionally locked myself in my room and sewed clothes or made collage art, and took pleasure in telling the college kid calling for alumni giving that I, an Ivy League grad, was unemployed. But I could be lured out for a drink pretty much any time anyone asked, provided I could scrape together some quarters.

But over the years, I’ve acquired some occasional responsibilities. But my public persona–which I modeled after the newspaper editor in The Sun Also Rises, who takes it as a point of pride to never appear to be working–was not dealing well with the strain.

Part of this was also a space-management issue–at least for the past couple of years, ever since I got a love interest but lost a room of my own.

See, travel-guide writing isn’t writing. It’s data management, and even though I’m pretty good at that, I still get hysterical when I sit down to work and discover that one of my carefully sorted piles of business cards got mixed in with the morning paper. I also get hysterical when I want to stop working for the day, but everywhere I look, there are freakin’ business cards, notes and maps…and is that a little slip of paper about to slide into the couch cushion and be lost for good?!

But two weeks ago, Peter and I reshuffled the house, and I got a room of my own again! With a door that shuts! I know I shouldn’t gloat (especially since, as I’ve mentioned, I have a pantry as well), but wow, my life has changed in ways I didn’t even expect. I no longer drift, like the Flying Dutchman, across the howling seas of the living room, dining room and sort of half-assed dressing room. I am not a feral worker.

I am a real worker! For two weeks, I woke up at 9:30, sat down to work by 11am, and worked for eight hours straight. (Oh, and then, like 13 hours straight on the last day, but whatever.)

Even though it’s the thing I’ve been avoiding for seven years, I kinda liked it.

I wonder how long this feeling will last?