This week was, as I predicted, particularly hellish at work, though not for the reasons I thought it would be. Yes, I had a lot of email and voicemail to catch up on. But I also had fresh crises to deal with. Thursday was the worst day, as I was putting together a couple of packages for the front office, got interrupted in the final stages of writing the buckslip for one of them in order to go to a meeting, then had to finish both the buckslip and my meeting notes before leaving for the day. So I didn't leave the office until 6:40 p.m. and, then, there was some unspecified metro delay. I ended up heating up a frozen pizza for dinner, instead of cooking something civilized, though I still baked the chocolate rum cheesecake I'd promised for the dessert table at Friday's going-away luncheon for the general. That was, at least, well-appreciated, including a request for the recipe and a comment from Alex that, "this is the sort of cheesecake people pay 5 dollars a slice for."
Friday was similarly insane, though interrupted by the luncheon and the associated miniature golf tournament. They set up a course around the floor with stacks of copy paper and so on to create obstacles. I commented to my boss that this was the first time he'd ever asked me to put in a below-par performance. The things I do to be seen as a good sport. But that left me scrambling to put together a briefing package for an early meeting on Monday, as well as getting out the end of week reports. I just managed to make it over to the Kennedy Center to hear Brave Combo. Unfortunately, they were doing this as, primarily, a "music to dance to" event and it was way too hot out for that. I found a nice shady spot on the wall, so survived it. I suppose if I had a suitable partner, I'd have enjoyed dancing and I engaged in a minor fantasy of a house with a nice wooden dance floor in one room, with nothing else but a decent stereo system.
Of course, I know it's completely ridiculous for one person to have the sort of space that implies. When I was in junior high, I went through this period of architectural obsession, drawing endless floor plans for dream houses. This was vaguely related to the architecture unit we did in art class, but it went far beyond anything practical. I was fond of designs that had a lot of special purpose rooms - one music room for every instrument I might reasonably contemplate playing, for example. One of the running features was a courtyard with an indoor swimming pool. I think there was often a roller skating rink. Sometimes, I justified the whole thing as a sort of boarding school, with a dormitory wing of bedrooms, all exactly the same size so nobody would have to deal with having the small bedroom, like I did in real life. At 13, it didn't occur to me that one would need fleets of servants to maintain a place like this.
The problem is that there's still a part of me that wants the indoor swimming pool and dance floor and viola room and so on, even while believing that no one person should need even as much as the roughly 1000 square feet I live in. I complain about having too much stuff, but I can't seem to really buckle down to getting rid of it at any reasonable pace. I did sell 26 books to the used bookstore yesterday and bring home only 6 new ones, most of which will probably go back there once they're read. And I complain about spending too much time at work, while I still feel that I slack off more than I should if I were going to be conventionally successful.
I realized a lot of the reason I end up staying and pretending I don't mind writing up meeting notes late into the afternoon is that I want to feel important. So much of modern work is about going to meetings and sending email about the meetings and so little is about anything concrete. If you put in the hours, that's something that people can use to keep score. Which is, of course, the same thing about the living space. The McMansions, complete with pools and guest cottages and all the amenities, are just a way for people to show off how well they're doing. As disdainful of all that as I am, there's a part of me that does want it. I suppose that being aware of the contradiction is part of the way to sove the problem.
Copyright 2005 Miriam H. Nadel