My 8 hours

This is Isaac. I have never posted on this blog before, though I am in theory 1/2 of it's subject matter. The reason for this is that I seldom have the desire to display my musings on the internet to be read and misconstrued by family and friends. Today I am sharing part musing, part tour. I used to be a campus tour guide at WWU so hopefully I haven't lost my touch. You'll be touring my work, so you can see where I put my 8 hours in. Most of our family and friends know that I am a graphic designer and that I design and supervise the production of planners. Now you can also see where it happens.

If you click on the image it will get larger, but undoubtedly you can see already that I work in a land of cubicles. The sun is fluorescent light and the earth is light blue stiff carpet, and the trees and cliffs are padded beige cube walls which are aligned in a predictably linear fashion. The good news is that there is plenty of fresh water in this professional environment, and trips to the community water hole almost always ensure interaction with other inhabitants.

My part of this beige land is right here. I actually have 7 or 8 other desks too. I dont' work on all of them at once. In the summer our work gets so busy that I hire 7 or 8 more people to help. The other desks are for those people. I have an invasive species of paperwork that always tries to have it's run of the place. I spend time every day weeding and pruning it down so that it is manageable.

Next to my desk I have a window through which is see another place, a green, fresh world that is alive, organic, and raining. When my eyes tire of the computer screen I turn and gaze at this world. From my window I notice inhabitants from my land straying out into the sodden landscape, they cluster in little groups and stand smoking and shivering. Occasionally other inhabitants emerge from the woods. I don't know where they come from. Do they live in the woods? Once I saw one trying to hide a large knife in his sleeve. I don't go in the woods.

Occasionally I go out into the organic world to take a walk. When I do then I often wind through a neighborhood and take a friendlier trail which is well traveled, beautiful, and has no evidence of inhabitants with sharp objects. It takes about 15 minutes round trip and I return to my beige environment feeling much warmer then when I left.

I enjoy my job, and the place I work is very pleasant, but I'm often struck with the rigid gray structure of modern work environments, and contrasting that with the terrestrial was my aim in today's post. Thanks for reading, -Isaac