Desk jobs
suck for everyone, I would imagine. But
I would assume even more so for every single person who sat through parent-teacher
conferences every year with the same complaint: “she’s very smart, she just can’t
seem to keep her damn mouth shut and stay in her seat” (I mean, I’m sure it was
a bit more sugary than that, but I can’t help the way my mind decides to remember
things).
You need to have so many different things going on at
once to get anything done.
It doesn’t matter how backwards that logic sounds. If there are not dozens of things circling around you at once, you don’t know how to function. You think in fragments. You juggle projects like a pro because multi-tasking is how you were built to operate. Keeping the stimulus changing by hopping from project to project helps keep what little attention span you have from becoming completely shot. While everyone else gets things done in a linear process that sounds more torturous than water-boarding, you’re over here with a little bitta this and a little bitta that, checking e-mail, snooping on clients, entering orders. You’re like Emeril Lagasse of your Google Chrome tabs—BAM! Oh, this blog post looks interesting—I’ve never thought about my risk for pre-eclampsia before. And then a few clicks later and you’re annoying the shit out of everyone with your newfound knowledge of potential pregnancy complications before you go back to what you’re actually supposed to be doing. No matter how painstakingly mundane your job is, you manage to get it done, even if you take a roundabout way to finish it.
It doesn’t matter how backwards that logic sounds. If there are not dozens of things circling around you at once, you don’t know how to function. You think in fragments. You juggle projects like a pro because multi-tasking is how you were built to operate. Keeping the stimulus changing by hopping from project to project helps keep what little attention span you have from becoming completely shot. While everyone else gets things done in a linear process that sounds more torturous than water-boarding, you’re over here with a little bitta this and a little bitta that, checking e-mail, snooping on clients, entering orders. You’re like Emeril Lagasse of your Google Chrome tabs—BAM! Oh, this blog post looks interesting—I’ve never thought about my risk for pre-eclampsia before. And then a few clicks later and you’re annoying the shit out of everyone with your newfound knowledge of potential pregnancy complications before you go back to what you’re actually supposed to be doing. No matter how painstakingly mundane your job is, you manage to get it done, even if you take a roundabout way to finish it.
You literally have no idea where the last hour just
went.
You blink, and all of the sudden, it’s 9:04am and you have a few papers carelessly strewn about your desk—papers that you assume you have been working on? You look up at your computer screen and see that you’ve gotten through quite a bit of work but have no recollection of doing it, and then you fear that in all the e-mails you don’t remembering sending, you’ve just typed “all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” over and over and over again. What is wrong with you? How could you have just spent the last hour daydreaming about what you’re going to write about tonight and which hobby you’re going to pick up next—oh, soap making sounds fun!—and why the countless companies with creative openings haven’t come begging you to work for them after you’ve spammed them with resumes and cover letters and haikus about your professional prowess? You spend so much of your time thinking about things that are more exciting than your desk job—like the atomic make-up of cardboard and what packing peanuts taste like and the entomology blow flies (something you’ve actually looked into when you had your “well maybe I’ll be a forensic scientist” thought)—that you completely forget that you’re stuck at your desk job.
You blink, and all of the sudden, it’s 9:04am and you have a few papers carelessly strewn about your desk—papers that you assume you have been working on? You look up at your computer screen and see that you’ve gotten through quite a bit of work but have no recollection of doing it, and then you fear that in all the e-mails you don’t remembering sending, you’ve just typed “all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” over and over and over again. What is wrong with you? How could you have just spent the last hour daydreaming about what you’re going to write about tonight and which hobby you’re going to pick up next—oh, soap making sounds fun!—and why the countless companies with creative openings haven’t come begging you to work for them after you’ve spammed them with resumes and cover letters and haikus about your professional prowess? You spend so much of your time thinking about things that are more exciting than your desk job—like the atomic make-up of cardboard and what packing peanuts taste like and the entomology blow flies (something you’ve actually looked into when you had your “well maybe I’ll be a forensic scientist” thought)—that you completely forget that you’re stuck at your desk job.
As soon as you get back on task you forget what you
were
You’re more interested in your co-workers’ lives than
your work.
You linger in the kitchen while everyone grabs their morning cup of coffee. You perk your ears to listen to the office hap. Oh, Jenny had a falling out with her maid of honor? You’ll have to go chat with her later and give her your guide to best friend break ups. Chet has a rash on his foot that he thinks might be MRSA? You might need to take a look, since you’re basically the Google Guru and WebMD personified…and then make sure to wash your hands. Thoroughly. You plan your day around when you’re going to talk to each of them and even make cue cards in your mind about the points you want to make, just like the speech you made in 7th grade when you ran for middle school Spirit Commissioner. You are so invested in the emotions of others, and nothing makes you happier than when you get to offer insight and build relationships. To you, company culture isn’t about making numbers and then going home and forgetting about everyone you spend the day with. It’s about making connections with people and breaking down those Eggshell-hued cubicle walls. You get pegged as the flake who slacks off and socializes too much, and you might have a reputation as the Office Gossip, but how are you supposed to get any work done when other people have interesting stories that you’re way too eager to overanalyze in your free time?
You linger in the kitchen while everyone grabs their morning cup of coffee. You perk your ears to listen to the office hap. Oh, Jenny had a falling out with her maid of honor? You’ll have to go chat with her later and give her your guide to best friend break ups. Chet has a rash on his foot that he thinks might be MRSA? You might need to take a look, since you’re basically the Google Guru and WebMD personified…and then make sure to wash your hands. Thoroughly. You plan your day around when you’re going to talk to each of them and even make cue cards in your mind about the points you want to make, just like the speech you made in 7th grade when you ran for middle school Spirit Commissioner. You are so invested in the emotions of others, and nothing makes you happier than when you get to offer insight and build relationships. To you, company culture isn’t about making numbers and then going home and forgetting about everyone you spend the day with. It’s about making connections with people and breaking down those Eggshell-hued cubicle walls. You get pegged as the flake who slacks off and socializes too much, and you might have a reputation as the Office Gossip, but how are you supposed to get any work done when other people have interesting stories that you’re way too eager to overanalyze in your free time?
Your desk is a disaster.
People give you that look when you tell them, “oh, just put it on my desk,” as if you’re saying, “why don’t you just burn it and forget it ever existed?” Surprisingly though, you know where everything is. That coffee-stained pile over there? Orders waiting on confirmation. That stack of files using Amy Poehler’s Yes, Please as a paperweight? Vendor profiles. The crumpled mountain of Post-Its engulfing your phone? All of your bubble-lettered doodles you scribbled down while you were intently listening to a very important conference call. There is definitely a method to your mess, and if anyone were to give your cubicle an organizational makeover, you’d be lost. No one understands how you get any work done (and most people doubt that you even do your work), but for you, there’s an art in the chaos of everything. Your desk reflects the billions of ideas you have bouncing from synapse to synapse, dripping with raw, creative energy. To organize that and try to make sense of it all would almost be a crime.
People give you that look when you tell them, “oh, just put it on my desk,” as if you’re saying, “why don’t you just burn it and forget it ever existed?” Surprisingly though, you know where everything is. That coffee-stained pile over there? Orders waiting on confirmation. That stack of files using Amy Poehler’s Yes, Please as a paperweight? Vendor profiles. The crumpled mountain of Post-Its engulfing your phone? All of your bubble-lettered doodles you scribbled down while you were intently listening to a very important conference call. There is definitely a method to your mess, and if anyone were to give your cubicle an organizational makeover, you’d be lost. No one understands how you get any work done (and most people doubt that you even do your work), but for you, there’s an art in the chaos of everything. Your desk reflects the billions of ideas you have bouncing from synapse to synapse, dripping with raw, creative energy. To organize that and try to make sense of it all would almost be a crime.
You take your breaks very seriously.
Sitting at a desk and staring at a computer screen for 8 hours of the day leaves you feeling more like a hostage than a productive member of your company. Your Spotify is blaring too loudly in your headphones and the guy who sits behind you pokes his eyes over his prison cell to see you lassoing your arms above your head while dancing to Whitney Houston. This is your “dance break” that you take religiously at 10:42 every morning. It falls directly between “second water break” at 10:28am and “go look in the fridge to see what everyone else brought for lunch break” at 11:17. They’re marked in your Outlook calendar, and once you’ve made a contract with Microsoft, it’s kind of unbreakable. Most people in the office probably think you have a perpetual UTI or chronic IBS, given how many “I’m just going to run to the bathroom really quickly” excuses you give when you leave your desk. Being whispered about as the Office Incontinent is better than risking your skin fusing to your cheap Staples chair that doesn’t even lean back and isn’t even fast enough for office races.
Sitting at a desk and staring at a computer screen for 8 hours of the day leaves you feeling more like a hostage than a productive member of your company. Your Spotify is blaring too loudly in your headphones and the guy who sits behind you pokes his eyes over his prison cell to see you lassoing your arms above your head while dancing to Whitney Houston. This is your “dance break” that you take religiously at 10:42 every morning. It falls directly between “second water break” at 10:28am and “go look in the fridge to see what everyone else brought for lunch break” at 11:17. They’re marked in your Outlook calendar, and once you’ve made a contract with Microsoft, it’s kind of unbreakable. Most people in the office probably think you have a perpetual UTI or chronic IBS, given how many “I’m just going to run to the bathroom really quickly” excuses you give when you leave your desk. Being whispered about as the Office Incontinent is better than risking your skin fusing to your cheap Staples chair that doesn’t even lean back and isn’t even fast enough for office races.
You use your lunch break as your passion hour.
While everyone else counts down the minutes until lunch because they’re dying to get out of the office and decompress, you’re watching the clock because it’s the hour that you devote to the hardest work of the day—your passion projects. (First of all, I hate the phrase “passion projects,” because it sounds like it was coined by a motivational speaker trying to sell an overpriced self-help book. But I feel in this sense, it’s the only phrase that works.) Your lunch hour is when your brain ignites, and you think of the endless potential for this hour to propel you closer to your dream. You write, you design, you doodle, you watch tutorials, you read, you plan, you learn something new, you Google (or Bing, I don’t discriminate) until your fingers cannot Google (or Bing, and while we’re at it, Yahoo, as well) anymore. Doing what you love re-energizes you more than any broth bowl from Panera or Kung Pao chicken from the questionable Chinese place up the street. You’re content with eating last night’s leftovers and possibilities for lunch. Leftovers and possibilities. The lunch of champions. This hour is what gets you through the day. This small drop in your metaphorical creative pond is where the magic begins, and you end up being kind of grateful that your desk job sucks, because without it, you wouldn’t be so motivated to sharpen your skills in order to find greener, more creative pastures.
While everyone else counts down the minutes until lunch because they’re dying to get out of the office and decompress, you’re watching the clock because it’s the hour that you devote to the hardest work of the day—your passion projects. (First of all, I hate the phrase “passion projects,” because it sounds like it was coined by a motivational speaker trying to sell an overpriced self-help book. But I feel in this sense, it’s the only phrase that works.) Your lunch hour is when your brain ignites, and you think of the endless potential for this hour to propel you closer to your dream. You write, you design, you doodle, you watch tutorials, you read, you plan, you learn something new, you Google (or Bing, I don’t discriminate) until your fingers cannot Google (or Bing, and while we’re at it, Yahoo, as well) anymore. Doing what you love re-energizes you more than any broth bowl from Panera or Kung Pao chicken from the questionable Chinese place up the street. You’re content with eating last night’s leftovers and possibilities for lunch. Leftovers and possibilities. The lunch of champions. This hour is what gets you through the day. This small drop in your metaphorical creative pond is where the magic begins, and you end up being kind of grateful that your desk job sucks, because without it, you wouldn’t be so motivated to sharpen your skills in order to find greener, more creative pastures.
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