Mark My Word

When I started to work at transcription,
I learned some unfortunate truths.
For example, we don’t speak that neatly;
Ad-libbing, we sound much like youths.
Some words get repeated too often.
We stutter and stammer a lot.
It’s common to backtrack on phrasing.
In writing, this doesn’t look hot.
Besides that, it takes me much longer
To write it all down than I thought.
At times I play lines back ad nauseam
To figure out what had been said.
Some audio programs are faulty,
With oversize skips that I dread.
In spite of all this, I continue
Both freelance and office-type work
Either writing or editing transcripts.
It still hasn’t made me berserk.