My Life at Work

I sit at a desk all day. Sometimes I am productive, most of the time I am trying to force myself to be productive. This means I spend a lot of time writing lists of what I should be doing, giving myself hourly deadlines and even providing myself with prizes if I accomplish my goals.

“Ellie, you can write one personal email if you finish writing this checklist by lunch.”

Most of the time I let myself do whatever I want to anyway, and the work gets done in the last moments before it is due.

Sometimes I just sit at my desk and go blank. I don’t think about anything, or do anything. I just can’t make myself do work. I just have to wait until it passes. Today I was staring blankly at my computer screen when I realized that it had just gotten darker outside.

Now this was a very strange realization as there are no windows within sight of my desk. I sit in cube land, a cube across the aisle, three cubes in front and one behind, and a door leading out to a windowless hallway. There are windows down the aisle in an office, so it is possible the tiniest bit of natural light reaches me every once in awhile. Well, today it did. I felt that the world had darkened. It was such a bizarre feeling that I had to get up and go peek out of the office window. Indeed, what had been a sunny day when I came into the office this morning had turned overcast. It is nice to know that even in cube land I can still have some sort of connection to the outside world.