Monday, February 22, 2010

Rub eyes. Stifle yawn. Splash water. Blow raspberries. NOTHING helps.

Could you put a bowl of fruit salad under my nose to distract me from thoughts of a pillow and sleep? I'm consumed with laze. Not merely besotted. I can't, rummage though my bag to look for a rubber band with which to re-tie my hair. Bag's lying all the way there, 2 inches away. My butt has frozen in its place. I've yawned five times in ten minutes, into my blue Benetton stole, that is my mother's. Even my leg is nodding off from being made to cross the other leg -- too tight, too long. How bore. Help me.

I'm killing time, scrolling through my Reader and blinking at articles on Femail Today -- Knitting in Pubs is the new rage; did you know? They call it Stitch and Bitch.

I do nothing of the sort. No knitting, no bitching. No chatting with people on the left of the compose mail page. Keyboard sounds keep me up. Enter. Shift. Control. Escape. As does the buzz of people. The sounds of paper being turned. The printer's out of ink. It's some one's birthday. A cake is being cut. Haaappy Biiiirthday tooo youuuu. People across the partition call for Sonu, something about a photocopy or a mug of tea. They answer cell phones that have an outdated Kill Bill ring tone. I get reminded that the whistle was once mine. It's not a reminder I care about. Colleagues make work calls. That keeps me up.

Hello? Hi, my name is Gorgonzola and I'm calling from here. Do you have a minute to talk?

Definitely a Monday. But tomorrow could be the same.

I'm awake and idle. I have time to read a giant essay on "Wonderful boredom". It's what I feel.

As a writer, it takes a while to convince others that you are working hard whilst appearing to be lying on the sofa staring at the ceiling, but once this is accomplished it can be very useful, especially if you are enjoying staring at the ceiling and hear, “I’m sorry, he can’t come to the phone at the moment, he’s working” – which suggests a genius on the cusp of a plot breakthrough rather than someone deciding whether to have poached or scrambled eggs for lunch.

And then, he says something that could have opened my eyes, had it not been for the years of first hand experience:

Boredom in the workplace is something else, of course. Here every moment has hovering over it the question-mark of time passing. This kind of boredom sucks the life from you.

Glad it's not just me.

3 comments:

Brown Girls said...

Existential question of the day: 'If knitting is the new yoga, what is the new knitting?' Quite the rage, that :)

Nimpipi said...

Commenting is the new knitting. I thought no one was going to do it. Phew! Thank you, kind friend from days by gone, for sullying your fingers and providing my soul with leetul bit tiger balm.

Pringle Man said...

Work Boredom is horrible. Fluorescent Lights included. I feel you Pip.

I have nothing else to add.