January 21st, 2023

Work Objects

There were certain things I kept in my office at Old Job that, while very useful there, I struggled to find context for anywhere else. I put up most of the art but my home office is looking a little crowded, and I never found a place for most of the little desk toys. I started bringing them into new office, but that one is shared, and also things started disappearing almost immediately. I do not suspect my colleagues, as I share my Kleenexes and snacks with them freely so I don’t think they’d have reason to take the whole boxes, so I guess it’s cleaners? Anyway, this means I don’t really bring much into the office that I actually like–anyway there’s no space for it. Just a typing stand, a couple posters, and a pair of low-value indoor shoes. Also I’m not supposed to have food in there anyway, due to creatures–which was actually a rule or at least a concern at the old office but I circumnavigated it with a tightly sealed cookie tin. This time, I’m there less space, there’s more concern, and I also just don’t have the energy. No food. And no scented body products, even the lightly scented lipbalm I enjoy, as we work more or less on top of each other and i would hate to be that person.

SO–some of the toys and art are still packed up, awaiting a bigger office. I ate most of the original snacks upon retrieval from the office in summer 2020, but oddly, today, I am finishing the last of my office popcorn–it still mainly popped. You can buy a big bag of loose kernels and pop a handful at a time in the microwave in folded paper bags, which is both cheap and healthy, and I used to do it all the time when I could keep snacks at work and had easy access to a microwave. Recommended if you still do. I probably won’t buy more as this just doesn’t seem like a home snack to me–I’m enjoying it, but it doesn’t make sense in this context.

I briefly felt that way about my favourite tea, Stash Liquorice Spice, which is the only tea I drink because I like it and not because I’m cold or trying to be polite. I salvaged a few boxes from the old office but initially, I did not have any interest in drinking it without my tea-drinking colleague and friend, as I had consumed tea almost exclusively in her company for so long. I have gone back to drinking it now and it’s still good tea, but not quite as good. A pretty wooden catch-all tray another friend gave me sat on my desk for years but has no place in the new office, so it has moved home and houses the remote controls in the living room. That is actually an improvement on the old order, when we stacked the coasters on top of them.

I had to give away a number of things immediately upon being laid off–mainly my father’s larger gardening implements, the spades and the hose. It’s hard to remember this now, but it was winter in March 2020, and I had been storing things for the allotment garden plot across the way in my office until it was time to get back to work. It was an odd arrangement but it was working–it was a big office–until the world stopped working and things had to be rearranged.

I just found that strawberry-scented lipbalm again too–the smell really is a little strong, so I mainly just wear it at home. Mark doesn’t care. Today, eating the popcorn, wearing the lipbalm, nearly three years after so much changed–but not everything–I still feel really sad for that time and that place. Not the popcorn, not being able to keep 30 feet of hose in my office, though certainly those are nice things. Just the people, the friendships, many of which I still have–those are what matter of course. But also that nice little rhythm I had there for a while–is it a rut if you wouldn’t choose to be elsewhere? I doubt I’ll have anything similar again and I’m truly sorry about that, whatever brilliant the future may hold.