The Transitional Season Landscape

The only thing to resist spring's hastened arrival is the lake. Green shoots of grass fight their way through the tangled brown remnants of last year's photosynthesis. Couples take the moment that their dog is occupied with its sniffing to caress in the fading light. Music and fragments of conversation travel from rolled-down car windows and yards partly shielded by skeletal shrubs. A crowd ambulates the path around the lake, thinner than it would have been earlier in the day, but sizable compared to the foot traffic of the preceding season. The city has awakened under the record heat and recently stretched daylight. 

But the lake is obstinate. It has clung to its coating of ice, which lies still and matte, ranging from thin smoothness to furrowed impasto, prefiguring the deep charcoal gray of the oncoming night. But the surface has fissured. In the places where the slush has split, open water brilliantly mirrors the dimming light and draws attention to its lingering presence. A shining silver point extends where the ice has begun to recede from the shore. Far off, narrow cracks reflect the city lights in duplicate.

Ducks descend and flap close to the surface, lured by the sparkling promise of open water. But they continue on and on across the lake because they are unable to find a gap wide enough for a landing. Despite its thinning cover and the obvious, glowing flaws that show through, the lake has not given up. It exhales occasional bracing breezes, no longer icy, but still asserting the recent grip of colder temperatures. 

We will soon allow the memories of snow, ice and visible breath to melt away with the bright sun, heavy air and pleasant frenzy of enjoying every moment we're free from winter. The lake, rather than providing sturdy support to ice houses and trucks, will be parted by keels, thrashed by swimmers and pierced by paddles and oars. Its peaceful, solitary time is coming to a harshly abrupt end. But our summers are short. Winter will be back soon enough, and the lake will begin forming a new cover of easily broken frost, persisting in its task until it builds up several inches of concealing ice. In the meantime, we'll enjoy this brief moment of candid open water.

Going It Alone: The Promising

I had a hard time recovering from my knee-bashing swing dance experience. I couldn't work up much enthusiasm about going to class the following week. Luckily I had paid for the whole month's session in advance, and I hate losing money for no reason other than reluctance. I begrudgingly left my apartment and headed to the studio, consoling myself by striking a silent (and admittedly pathetic) thought bargain: I had to go to the lesson, but I could skip the class field trip to Lee's Liquor Lounge right after. I had heard that no-one from class had gone to the Famous Dave's field trip at the end of the previous month's session, and the last thing I wanted was to stand around by myself while more experienced dancers burned up the floor.  


After I checked in for class, I headed into the waiting area and resumed my normal habit of milling about awkwardly until class started and people were compelled to interact with me. After about a minute, I decided I was tired of standing silently amongst the chatting couples and friends. I walked over to a group of people I recognized and gracefully wedged my way into their conversation. None of them seemed to mind, and one of the women started trying to convince me to go on the field trip. I clung stubbornly to my irresolute ideals, and the instructor saved me from having to commit by calling us to come on up for class. 


With the initial conversational ice broken, I started talking to another classmate as we headed up the stairs. This thankfully saved me from the second bout of solitary standing that I usually experience during class. The instructor puts on a song or two before he starts leading the lesson, giving us time to practice what we learned the previous week. I don't have much problem with asking someone to dance, but there weren't enough leaders to go around that session. Most of the men who were enrolled came with girlfriends, so they were usually occupied with built-in pre-lesson partners. Since much of beginning Lindy Hop involves learning how to follow a lead, it's hard to practice on your own. Thus the awkward solo standing. 


But this week was different. I talked to my new friend, who was another rare singleton, until the lesson started. The person I'd hobbled the previous week was not in attendance, and I didn't inflict serious harm on any of my partners. After a last burst of big, showy jazz-standard-concluding brass chords rang from the speaker system, the instructor reminded us about the field trip to Lee's. He and the Beginner Plus students wouldn't be able to join us until their lesson ended in about an hour, but he encouraged our class to go over right away. 


I asked my new friend K if she was going to go. She reflected my initial feelings about the outing with a cagily non-committal, "I don't know, I haven't decided yet. Are you going?" "I think we should go," I rallied. "Then if we don't dance, we can at least not dance together." She agreed, and we encouraged a few more of our classmates to join us. We quickly realized that we'd have to put our new strength-in-numbers strategy to the test if we hoped to find the dance venue. One couple had more than a vague sense about how to get there, so they went to the head of our hastily-formed convoy of black Hondas.  


We arrived at Lee's without incident, but our number did not lend us much strength once we saw the dance floor. It was packed with impressively twirling dancers and ringed by a sizable audience of spectators. K and I quickly retreated to the bar for some additional liquid courage. This proved more difficult than I'd anticipated. The lone craggy, cranky bartender made shallow rounds at the far end of the bar for quite some time, so we decided to go to him. Predictably, he moved to the end of the bar we had just left and started treading water and taking orders there. Finally he drifted back in our direction and poured our drinks. Suitably reinforced with alcoholic bravery, we headed to the fringes of the dance floor. 


My first partner was an octogenarian. He led me onto the floor during a song that didn't lend itself to Lindy Hop. I shuffled around confusedly for a while, prompting him to clarify, "It's like a polka." That was not at all helpful to me. Eventually I caught on to the basic step, and he proceeded to grab both of my arms, lean back and gallop us around with the centrifugal force of a much younger man. I could make out nothing but his gleefully smiling face against the blur of motion we created. Before the song was over, he'd done this move a second time, spun-thrown me across the dance floor twice, and turned me repeatedly. This last move caused me to accidentally trail my fingers across his bald, sweaty head. This incident and my uncertainty about the steps should have fused to form an uncomfortable start to the evening. But rather than being off-putting, the experience made me eager to keep trying.  


As the night progressed, I asked some people to dance and a few people asked me. Most were from my class, but I also approached a couple of new people. While I couldn't pick up on everything my parters wanted me to do, I think I passably faked the parts I didn't understand. At least there was little unintentional impact, and that is good enough for me at this point. When neither of us was dancing, I talked to K or the other people who had joined our solidarity party along the way. I met a lot of my women classmates for the first time, which was strange but understandable since our rotation of dance partners is primarily comprised of men. I consider my first social swing dance outing a success, not only because I didn't kill the octogenarian with my dance moves, but because I conquered my recurring shyness and formed connections with some new people. 


I moved up into a more advanced level of lessons this month. I'm hoping that the smaller class size will help me get to know my classmates even better while I improve at Lindy Hop. If nothing else, I'll probably gather some new blog material. Learning more complicated moves will undoubtedly create more opportunities to accidentally body slam my partner. 

Going It Alone: The Ungainly

While the Groupon emails I receive each day usually feature waxing services or restaurants I've no desire to try, I found a surprisingly appealing offer in my inbox over the summer. The deal was $20 for $40 worth of swing dance lessons, and it arrived about a month before Andy and I were due to move into our own separate places. I figured these classes would be a good way to get out of my solitary apartment, get some exercise and meet new people. I'd used salsa dancing as a means to the same ends in Dublin, and I had quite enjoyed myself. I intrepidly clicked the "Buy!" button, then proceeded to wait four months before redeeming the offer the week it expired. Despite delaying my first class as long as possible, however, I've gone to a lesson every week since.


Learning the Lindy Hop has been fun and challenging, but forming any sort of relationship with the people in my class has been harder than I anticipated. The class is set up so that you rotate partners frequently. You only dance with each person for a maximum of five minutes, and there's barely time to reiterate what's written on your name tag before the instructor counts you in. It's also tough to multitask at our current coordination level, so the time you spend with each partner is devoted to silent and intensive concentration on your feet. After trying a move a few times, you high five, change partners and start all over again. I suppose it's a little like speed dating, except you engage in awkward dancing instead of awkward conversation. And most of the men arrive with their girlfriends.


Given the quiet whirlwind of my social interactions in class, I was pleased to see one of my dance partners when I looked up from my empty mocha at a coffee shop. I went to say hello, glad for the chance to talk without the "tri-ple step, tri-ple step, rock step" rhythm pulsing beneath my thoughts the entire time. We chatted about class briefly, then talked about his current graduate studies and my potential ones. It wasn't a long conversation, but it was several times more extensive than all of our previous verbal exchanges combined. I left feeling proud of myself, both for enrolling in the class and approaching this person outside of it. I had stumbled upon a potential new friendship, and I was eager to cultivate it further during the following week's lesson.


The next time he came to class, I watched as he progressed from one partner to the next, up and down the lines of followers that stretched the length of the dance floor. Finally I was next in the rotation. I greeted him by name without looking at the adhesive-backed reminder on his chest, and I asked him about something he'd mentioned at the coffee shop. Then we started dancing. My chatting to him had caused him to miss the instructions about which steps we should be practicing, and I felt pressure to be a really good dancer. We both panicked. He worriedly explained that he didn't know what we were supposed to be doing, and I found myself completely unable to follow his unusually anxious lead. I not only stepped on his feet, but I somehow managed to bash both of his knees with my own.

I've stepped on partners' feet before. It's bound to happen when you pair two inexperienced dancers. It's slightly embarrassing, but the feeling fades quickly as you focus on not doing it again. Crippling someone with a double-knee smash, however, is ungainly beyond belief. I was immensely relieved when the instructor's cry of "Rotate!" resounded through the room. The hot humiliation settled into disappointment midway through my casualty-free stint with the next partner. Of all my classmates, why did I have to succumb to extreme clumsiness while paired with the one person I'd encountered outside the dance studio?


I think I managed to redeem myself later that evening. The class had shrunk considerably since the first lesson in the session, and we actually completed the entire partner rotation. I saw that my bruised friend was coming close to having to dance with me again, and I decided to make the most of the opportunity. When he (perhaps reluctantly) took my hand, I smiled as winningly as possible and said, "I promise I won't step on you this time." I thought it best not to bring up the knee incident, even jokingly. He laughed graciously, and I was grateful to put most of the awkwardness behind us. I didn't step on his feet again, nor did any of our joints collide. I suppose I might consider that a small triumph.


But he hasn't been back to class since.

Up next: Going It Alone: The Promising

Going It Alone: The Bad

Being without a significant other means that I no longer have a built-in person to bring along when I discover that Vicious Vicious is playing at the Entry in a few hours. The challenge of dating was finding things to do together, but now that task has reversed into finding people to invite to the things to do. No-one was without plans so late on a Saturday evening and, while I prefer to be able to share my show-going experiences with others, I rarely allow the lack of a companion to deter me from hearing a band I like. Especially when they are as reclusive as Vicious Vicious. I decided to go on my own.


This was nothing new to me. I quite frequently ventured out alone when I lived on other continents, whether it was to visit a museum, watch a Liverpool match down at the pub, go on a wine tasting tour, or listen to a trad session or poetry reading. Nothing especially untoward ever happened, and I almost always talked to some interesting people. 


The individual I met at the Entry that night was, well...interesting in a different way. Some people in front of me went to refresh their drinks after the opening band finished, and I moved a little closer to the stage. This was a rather large mistake, since it put me next to the person who was to put a damper on the rest of my night. He saw that I was holding an empty beer bottle and asked if I needed another drink. I said no but decided to chat with him anyway. 


During the course of our brief conversation, he revealed that he was nearly a decade older than me, told me he hated jazz after I said I used to play saxophone, referred to himself as a poindexter, extended his driving-gloved hand for me to shake three times and forgot my name. Finally his friend, who had been at the bar, returned and started talking to Driving Gloves. I took advantage of the diversion by inching imperceptibly away from him while feigning great interest in some old text messages. I carefully avoided any further eye contact until he reached over and took the empty bottle from my hand. I smiled a thanks at him for relieving me of that burden but did not engage further. 


At long, awkward last Vicious Vicious took the stage. I honed in on the lead singer/guitarist because he was the furthest away from Driving Gloves and there could be absolutely no mistake about where my gaze was resting. After the first song, Driving Gloves shouted, "Free Bird!" No one laughed or acknowledged the joke, and I cringed for both of us. I cringed again when someone in the crowd had to ask his friend to stop flailing so much because he had clipped an innocent bystander. I doggedly continued to avoid glancing anywhere near their direction, and I thought Driving Gloves had taken the hint.


Up to this point, my encounter with him had been nothing more than a slightly uncomfortable bit of small talk, much like any conversation you might have with someone with whom you just can't connect. But about three or four songs in, he reached across the people I'd allowed to squeeze between us and extended his outstretched pointer finger into my peripheral vision. This juvenile method of drawing attention to himself worked: I looked at him. But since I don't respond well to vague threats of being poked in the eye, my response was probably not what he'd hoped. I glanced over only long enough to shake my head and say, "Don't do that." Then I promptly resumed ignoring him. At least outwardly. It was hard to regain much focus on the music, and I'd lost much of my initial excitement about being at the show. 


Surprisingly, that was not the first time a man has attempted to garner attention by pointing his finger in my face. When I was studying abroad in London, I took a side trip to Barcelona with one of my fellow classmates. He began to annoy me less than a day into the four-day holiday, and we very, very narrowly avoided a bus debacle that would have caused us to be stranded together for another night. I was quite ready to keep to myself and write in my journal by the time we boarded the plane back to London, but he had other ideas. When he wasn't putting my tray table down repeatedly, he was hovering his finger an inch or so away from my body without actually touching me. I suppose that pointing experience was more troublesome than this more recent one, since I wasn't trapped on a plane with Driving Gloves.  


I soon learned that being with a friend or boyfriend at the Entry probably wouldn't have saved me from unwelcome advances. Soon after the finger-pointing incident, an extremely drunk guy came up and started loudly hitting on a woman standing behind me. His pickup line was, "That girl's not wearing a bra, is she?" referring to the backup singer on the stage. Eventually the poor targeted woman's boyfriend started talking to Drunkety Drunk, who told Boyfriend that his girlfriend was wonderful, amazing, and he was going to go find someone who would get effed up with him. When he left, Boyfriend remarked to Girlfriend, "I guess he didn't notice I had my arm around you the whole time."


I didn't wait to see if the band did an encore. I squeezed through the crowd as soon as they'd finished their main set, periodically checking to make sure that Driving Gloves wasn't following me. He didn't, and I'm sure he was harmless. I hope he keeps going to the Entry, taking chances and initiating conversation with people. I hope he chats up someone who will let him buy her a beer, laugh at his jokes and connect with him over a mutual hatred of jazz. Most of all, I hope he's not reduced to having to point his finger in her face.


Next up: Going It Alone: The Ungainly

Becoming an Object in Motion

This post puts an end to a full two years of writer's block. I can't even legitimately call it that, since writer's block implies an enduring and diligently fought battle against some inscrutable obstacle. I did fight it at first, wondering why I was having such a hard time calling forth words and shaping them into anything I thought worthy of sharing. Eventually I gave up trying. The reason for my struggle, and even my writing itself, came to seem insignificant. But now, with the clarity of hindsight, the reason has transformed into something both significant and worthy of its own narrative.

Part of it was being busier than almost ever before. After finishing my dreadful assignment at Insurance Place, I enrolled in a full semester of art history courses at the University of Minnesota. Writing twenty-odd papers in sixteen weeks, plus wall labels for my internship in the Contemporary Art department at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, left me no time for recreational blog posts.

After I scraped through the semester, I was asked to curate my very own exhibition at the MIA. I was to be the one who would decide on a theme, pick the artworks, research the artists and the time period and write the wall labels. Having this amount of responsibility and creative freedom as an intern is a rare opportunity, and I was determined to make the very most of it. That meant that if I was going to spend my time writing anything at all, it had better be wall labels.

Learning as much as possible about Zeppelins, standards of nineteenth-century hygiene, roller coasters, anarchist bombings, cabarets, corsets, electric light, antisemitism, luxury ocean liners and giant telescopes seemed to pay off. Despite the few small errors that were pointedly brought to my attention by members of the public (really, we're talking a gaffe as miniscule as omitting wood from the list of media that make up an entire bicycle) I am very proud to say that A Means of Escape: European Posters from 1889 to 1930 was my first exhibition.


If I want to make a career of mounting such shows, I will need at least a master's degree and, preferably, a PhD. I started working towards that goal as soon as my show was up on the walls, and I plunged into studying far more math than I had thought about or attempted over the last ten years. I was dismayed to learn that I could no longer remember how to find a percent difference when I'd once been able to do calculus. My GRE preparations also humbled my opinion of my command of vocabulary. I took the exam on Halloween, achieved passable results and began writing personal statements for five different art history graduate programs. I submitted the last of them on January 15.

So I've been busy over the last two years. But time constraints were not the only thing holding me back. I found I no longer knew what to write about. I started this up as a travel blog, and it was almost difficult not to find material whilst living in new places. During my expatriatism in London, Dublin and Sydney, I encountered new adventures almost daily and, whether these novelties took the form of fun or frustration, the experiences were frequently worth relating. What in my American life of laundry, dishes, commuting and routine could be story-worthy?

Mainly my ludicrous experiences as a temp. I documented those for a year or more, until I finally found a permanent job. It is absolutely not lack of material that has forced me to stop writing about the workplace. Rather, companies generally frown upon their HR professionals spilling intimate secrets on the Internet, and I care more about being fired now that I have good benefits and friendly relationships with some of my co-workers.

These are all issues that could have been surmounted. The most serious problem was that when I did put pen to paper, I wrote things that I wasn't ready to believe or acknowledge. There had been many small signs that it might be time for Andy and me to end our relationship. They pricked at my consciousness and frequently disturbed my thoughts, but I could ignore them well enough as long as I didn't write them down.

I told myself that increasingly identifying with lyrics about heartbreak and loss on the radio didn't mean much. It was normal for couples to argue with and annoy each other a lot more after being together more than three years. Our longevity could also explain why I didn't miss him as much as I once had when he went on business trips. Outside stress was causing my uncomfortable uncertainty about whether or not we'd still be together by the time such-and-such future event rolled around. His busy work schedule was the reason why I felt like I didn't really know him as well anymore, like we were now one against the other instead of one against the world.

There was no obvious transgression or problem, so I countered every doubt or frustration with an increasingly weak reassurance that these problems were temporary. All I had to do was remember was how elated I'd been to find him in the crowd at the Charles de Gaulle airport arrivals gate, the feeling of being invincible and collectively amazing when we were together, the custom-decorated cakes, the surprise ticket to a sold-out show I really wanted to attend, or any one of the little favors he did for me on a routine basis. Things were never that bad, so it seemed like they might one day revert back to what they had been before. But they just never did. Eventually, recalling those memories only emphasized the chasm between what we'd felt then and what we didn't feel now.

Since our love for each other changed so slowly over time, it was hard to decide what to do and when. We talked seriously about breaking up two or three times, but neither of us was ready to face the thought that we would have to let the other go. Finally the strain between us was too great to ignore, and we decided to act on the thoughts and fears we'd been trying so hard to suppress.

I got my own apartment in September. Andy came over the day of the move, just to reassure me that things would, in fact, be fine. The next day, we went to our old place together to load our cars with the things that hadn't required a U-Haul. He called me in a panic the day after because we had misunderstood the date by which we were supposed to completely vacate the apartment. The place was still a right mess and our landlord was livid. I went over to help him scrub, dust, mop, vacuum and argue with our landlord about the cleanliness of the oven and the outside of the windows.

The supportive tenor of those first few post-breakup days has remained, and Andy is still one of my best friends. I will always care about him in some way, and I still think that he is an indisputably caring, creative and talented person. Continuing to be present in each other's lives as we move on as separate entities will sometimes create painful situations. But I am grateful to take that risk.

Our romantic relationship ended and I no longer needed to avoid the concretization of my concerns. But I still couldn't write. This was now nothing more than a lack of momentum, but as I learned when I was between temp assignments, that can be staggeringly difficult to overcome. I repeatedly vowed that I would write something more than an email. Tomorrow.

I started to despair over my lack of creative passion. I envied the people who enjoy something so much that they feel compelled to do it. To get out of bed early, stay up all night, lose all sense of time and place and work unseemly long hours, all for the sake of chasing a ridiculously tempting muse. All I felt compelled to do was procrastinate as long as possible.

Until Raf said I needed to write. I don't know what it was about his particular urging that actually produced a result. I had known what he told me for quite some time, and Erinn had frequently nudged me as well. Maybe the time was right. Maybe it was his choice of words. Maybe the preceding glass of truly terrible wine had created the appropriate sense of gravity. I will never be certain.

Whatever the delicate and ephemeral mixture of intangible elements, it produced a new resolve. I have written something nearly every day since. And I finally overcame what increasingly seemed an insurmountable barrier--I published a blog post. And with it, I have rediscovered my passion. I remembered how driven I can be to find the right word, to create lyricism in a sentence, to convey my thoughts in a tangible, meaningful and entertaining way. I feel the need to move people with words. I don't think I have succeeded in that yet. But I intend to keep writing until I do.

Podcast Escapism

With the end of the year came the end of my assignment at Insurance Place. It never really improved. I continued to spend the majority of my time opening mail and folding forms. But I actually came to prefer this to writing letters, which is what I was hired to do. When opening mail, I could listen to my iPod. In addition to being entertaining, the podcasts I regularly downloaded made it possible for me to drown out the gossipy and inane conversation going on in the cubicles surrounding mine. I would much prefer to hear Ira Glass spin tales on This American Life than listen to my coworker repeatedly tell the story of how her daughter was up all night puking into a bucket. I find Terri Gross' interviews on Fresh Air much more enriching than my coworkers' hostile phone interrogations of their husbands.

While few people hesitated to share their personal business with the rest of the office, one person went above and beyond. A few months ago, she and I were some of the last people in the office. She took a call and, from phrases such as, "What about last weekend," "Was I just a conquest," "What do you want from me," and "I don't need a relationship," I determined that she was blatantly discussing an affair. I sit within plain sight of her, so she should have been aware of my presence. But I started making an excessive amount of noise just in case she wasn't. This did nothing to stop her all-too-detailed conversation. Unfortunately, the statement, "This has nothing to do with the baby; she's not even born yet" revealed exactly who her partner had been. One of two men in our department was soon to be a father. Suddenly it made sense why L had been complaining about how weird S had been that week. She'd been spurned. I'm not sure what S's relationship with the baby's mother is. Maybe it's not necessarily wrong that he's sleeping with someone else. But the whole thing disturbed me. Mostly because I just don't want to know.

I also didn't want to know about the boob job L had after Thanksgiving. But I heard all about it. Repeatedly. She told just about everyone in the office about it before she had it done, squealing about how excited she was and reveling in the dramatic story of how she had revealed the news to her daughter. She was out for two weeks for the procedure (which I relished), then returned wearing low-cut tops and complaining about how sore she was. I take mental notes about occurrences like this just in case I am ever hired to write a season of The Office. Unfortunately, a boob job episode has already been done. And whoever wrote it must have worked with someone just like L. I was frequently struck by how often she did or said something exactly like what Jan said or did after she had her boob job on The Office. I was also bemused by the behaviour of the other ladies in the office. Several of them came by to see the results for themselves, with one woman inquiring, "Do you have anything for show and tell?" I'm fairly certain I also heard one person ask if she could touch them.

As much as I liked tasks that allowed me to drown out such conversations with podcasts, I never became fond of packing up processed claims. This may be because I was offered more instruction on this aspect of my job than any other. I was supposed to remove all the clips from stacks of paper, put the paper into a box and tape the box shut. While this sounds like the most self-explanatory task one can be given, it sadly was not. The second time I packed up the claims, I attached a mailing sheet to the top of the box as I had been instructed. I taped all four sides of the form just like I had the previous month. The next day, my supervisor forwarded an email she had received from one of the people in the mail room which stated that that we should only use one small piece of tape when attaching the form. Above the forwarded message, she had written, "FYI." For your information, too, I thought. I would never have done something as pointless as taping a form on all four sides if she hadn't told me to do so.

I had a few more claims to pack up on the day that I received the tape instructions email. I very deliberately only used one small piece of Scotch tape to attach the mailing form to the remaining box. But the next day, another forwarded email was waiting for me. "The box yesterday had almost as much tape on it as the day before," the mail room person griped. Above this message, my boss had reiterated the instruction to only use one small piece of tape. I replied immediately, writing that I had only used one small piece of tape. I explained that after I had taped the box shut, one of my coworkers had reopened it to take out a claim she had given me accidentally. She had retaped the box herself, and, I told my boss, could have taped over the mailing sheet. Maybe it wasn't noble to call out my coworker, but there's no way I was going to make it look as though I couldn't follow so simple an instruction.

If she were to provide a similarly detailed explanation about proofreading to her other employees, then they might stop sending out letters that included wrong names in the salutations, misspellings of cities and incorrect verb tenses. Sometimes the mistakes I found were comical. I was supposed to send follow-up letters to people who needed to submit documents before we could pay out their death claim. To find out what documents I should ask for, I had to look at the last letter the claims examiner had sent. One of these letters was addressed to the city of Creep, Illinois. I was skeptical about the likelihood of anyone naming their city Creep, so I typed the city, state and zip code into the Google maps search bar. The result read, "Did you mean Crete, IL?" Sigh. In another case, the beneficiary was listed as Rabbi Someone-Or-Other. The examiner had crossed out Rabbi and written "Robbi." On the letter, they reduced the Rabbi's actual first name to a middle initial following the first name Robbi. I did a search for "Rabbi What's-His-Face" on Google just to make sure I wasn't uncorrecting a valid correction. Sure enough, the person is listed on several websites as the leader of a Jewish congregation. He name is not Robbi.

To be fair, several of my coworkers were nice and I appreciated my boss letting me adjust my schedule around my class. But I'm glad my assignment is over. It could very well be the last temp job I have. I'm enrolled as a full-time student for this coming semester, and my classes and internship at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts will take up most of my 9-to-5 hours. I'll have to work what is likely to be an unfulfilling job on the evenings and weekends to make up for it. But, when an unfulfilling job is paired with making great strides in another direction, it doesn't seem so bad.

Robots and Mail Merges

I have returned to the workforce. It's not necessarily a triumphant return. I'm on another temp assignment. I've been away from an office setting for a while, so I've been finding it a little difficult to readjust. I'd forgotten, for example, what disgusting habits people have. Our warren of cubicle walls, while effective at blocking sight, don't do nearly enough to muffle sound. I share a carpeted cube partition with a woman who likes to eat while she's talking on the phone. The fact that I'm not the one on the other end of the line makes no difference. I can still hear her talking with her mouth full, and it's still gross.

But that pales in comparison to the sound of fingernail clippers that sometimes comes from the cube cater corner to mine. Admittedly, I am quite squeamish about fingernails and am probably extra sensitive the noise that cutting them makes. But I would imagine most people might have a problem with their coworkers sending nail particles flying about the office. Having to listen while the owner of the clippers trimmed her nails one day was fairly painful. But an even higher threshold of disgusting office practices was crossed last week. The woman who sits in the cube behind me went over to her neighbor's unoccupied desk, borrowed the clippers from her drawer and started cutting her own nails with them while she was on the phone. I sat in my decidedly non-soundproofed cube, flinching with every snip of the clippers.

Yet on rare occasions, I'm glad to be able to overhear what goes on in the office. One recent verbal exchange proved to be very amusing. One woman, who usually prefers to complain very audibly about her divorce, was instead seething about a very condescending email she'd apparently received from a co-worker.
"I just can't stand the condensation any more!" she cried. "You know what? I'm smart!" Somehow, confusing the main word in her sentence seemed to belie her statement.

But worse than any ambient office sound I could hear is the crushing boredom of temp work. The setting may have changed from Class Action Place to Insurance Place, but the menial, vacuous tasks are the same. When the position was originally described to me, I was told that I'd be writing letters to inform people what they needed to submit before they could claim insurance money. That in itself sounded boring enough. But when I turned up on the first day, I learned that by writing letters, they meant filling in the blank fields in a form letter with the same pieces of information over and over.

The additional tasks I've been assigned over the last three weeks have continued to decrease in difficulty. First, my supervisor told me I'd be spending several hours a day helping to open the mail. This involves date stamping every single thing that arrives in every single envelope, so it's a very time-consuming process. And it seems to require an immense wealth of knowledge and skill compared to what occupied my time for most of the day today. I was tasked with removing the paper clips from large stacks of paper and then packing the paper into boxes. The elevator lobby on each floor is hung with a poster that encourages employees to submit their ideas on how the company could save costs. I was tempted to write an email that said something along the lines of "Stop paying a temp to do what robots and mail merges could do." But then I'd be out of a job.