The Circular File
This is the shortest work week of the year in my industry and therefore it is also one of the longest weeks of the year in my industry. What? Look, you know the difference between objective time and subjective time, don’t you? It can be mathematically expressed as an index for all you number nerds out there. Your numerator is how long each minute feels and your denominator is how many minutes are objectively in the week. Or you could use hours, days, whatever. In my industry we basically shut down around 1pm on Wednesday for the whole weekend which means objectively speaking I have a 2.5 day work week. However because of the combination of people wanting to jam things in before the holiday and the overwhelming longing for the weekend that 2.5 days feels like about, oh, I’d say ten days which gives you a subjective time index of 4. Or 4:1. However you want to express it. Anyway, it’s long. That longing for the weekend is a big factor in the equation. In a normal five day work week on Monday you come in, stunned and horrified that the weekend is over. On Tuesday you’re just numb and hopeless. The previous weekend has receded into distant memory and you can’t even see any chance of freedom from there. Wednesday is the first glimmer of hope especially on Wednesday afternoon when the week is past the 50% mark. Thursday things improve with every passing hour, by Thursday night you can smell the sweet aroma of freedom. Friday is the day of insane optimism, the day when you believe life has far more potential than it really does, the day when you promise all sorts of crazy things to yourself that you have no chance of achieving. Friday is that “today is the first day of the rest of my life” day when your optimism is highest. On Fridays, in short, you are an idiot but a happy idiot.
The week of Thanksgiving the whole equation is screwed. Monday you are stunned and horrified and yet part of you is in Wednesday afternoon mode right from the get-go. However that weird mix of emotions is what makes the week so long. You’re trying to hang on to the final stretched tendrils of good feeling from the previous weekend and pull them across you like some insulating emotional blanket to cover you and bridge the gap from weekend to holiday. It can’t be done, but you kept trying. Hence the near complete stoppage of time.
I’m trying to combat that by getting ahead on cleaning out my office. No, I’m not leaving the company (as far as I know) but they are going to do some renovations around the Christmas and New Year’s holidays and we have been instructed to clean out as much crap as we can. So I’m getting a jump on it now. I take an odd pleasure in throwing out stuff. It’s liberating. There are times when I feel like I should whittle down my material possessions to whatever I can carry on my back. Then I remember that that's a dumb idea since the older I get the less I can carry. No, it’s just not practical. Downsizing the amount of crap one has is, well, maybe not enjoyable but it certainly is evocative. I spent part of my afternoon diving into file drawers that I haven’t even opened in years and pulling out stuff to throw in the paper recycling dumpster. Some of the files aren’t even mine. They belonged to my predecessor in this broom closet of an office that I have occupied since the turn of the century. So yeah, I’m throwing away printouts that have dates starting with “19” on them. Every time I do that I think about everyone who was still alive then but isn’t now. Then I think about how someday some other schmuck is going to be throwing out my files when I’m dead. Hard-copy reminders of mortality, that’s what these damn documents are. Maybe that’s why it feels so good to throw them away.
I had a minor twinge of guilt over some items that were hitting the dumpster. I briefly thought that if anyone ever wanted to write a history of some of the properties I have worked on in my twelve plus years with my current employer then these things that I am throwing away would be very useful. Then I remember what it is we do here and the relative value of the properties in question in relation to the overall history of sports television and the twinge of guilt disappears. None of this stuff ever needs to be documented by anyone, anywhere, at anytime. It is where it belongs now, in both the proverbial and the literal dustbin of history.
Yet despite all that there are a few relics that I’m keeping. I don’t know why I’m keeping some of them but I find myself unable to throw them out. I’m definitely keeping my years of DayMinder brand desk calendars. Those contain both personal and professional information that I hope to re-use someday so there's a reason for that. A thing I am hesitant to throw away that I have no reason to keep is the resume of a guy who used to work here who I was pretty good friends with at some point but our friendship deteriorated when he advanced to a position that he was perhaps not ready for in an industry that he didn’t really want to work in anymore. I separate the professional from the personal pretty easily but this guy wasn’t really good at doing that. In fact I remember his last day quite clearly, I bought him a going away gift and took him out and got him good and loaded at lunch time and he was completely surprised and didn’t know how to react. I let him leave early (better to not have a drunken soon-to-be-ex-employee going around the office) and I remember thinking as we shook hands that I’d never hear another word from him despite his happy-drunk “I’ll definitely stay in touch, thanks for everything” parting words. It’s been four years almost to the day and I haven’t heard a word. So having a copy of his resume from an old file is sort of like having a bridge to the past before our friendship had run its course (or even begun), before a whole lot of people I know had died, before a lot of things both bad and good occurred.
Eh, there’s no turning back the clock. Everything ends sooner or later. Friendships run their course, jobs change, people die. I might as well chuck that document too. It’s only a piece of paper, as disposable as the rest of us.
The week of Thanksgiving the whole equation is screwed. Monday you are stunned and horrified and yet part of you is in Wednesday afternoon mode right from the get-go. However that weird mix of emotions is what makes the week so long. You’re trying to hang on to the final stretched tendrils of good feeling from the previous weekend and pull them across you like some insulating emotional blanket to cover you and bridge the gap from weekend to holiday. It can’t be done, but you kept trying. Hence the near complete stoppage of time.
I’m trying to combat that by getting ahead on cleaning out my office. No, I’m not leaving the company (as far as I know) but they are going to do some renovations around the Christmas and New Year’s holidays and we have been instructed to clean out as much crap as we can. So I’m getting a jump on it now. I take an odd pleasure in throwing out stuff. It’s liberating. There are times when I feel like I should whittle down my material possessions to whatever I can carry on my back. Then I remember that that's a dumb idea since the older I get the less I can carry. No, it’s just not practical. Downsizing the amount of crap one has is, well, maybe not enjoyable but it certainly is evocative. I spent part of my afternoon diving into file drawers that I haven’t even opened in years and pulling out stuff to throw in the paper recycling dumpster. Some of the files aren’t even mine. They belonged to my predecessor in this broom closet of an office that I have occupied since the turn of the century. So yeah, I’m throwing away printouts that have dates starting with “19” on them. Every time I do that I think about everyone who was still alive then but isn’t now. Then I think about how someday some other schmuck is going to be throwing out my files when I’m dead. Hard-copy reminders of mortality, that’s what these damn documents are. Maybe that’s why it feels so good to throw them away.
I had a minor twinge of guilt over some items that were hitting the dumpster. I briefly thought that if anyone ever wanted to write a history of some of the properties I have worked on in my twelve plus years with my current employer then these things that I am throwing away would be very useful. Then I remember what it is we do here and the relative value of the properties in question in relation to the overall history of sports television and the twinge of guilt disappears. None of this stuff ever needs to be documented by anyone, anywhere, at anytime. It is where it belongs now, in both the proverbial and the literal dustbin of history.
Yet despite all that there are a few relics that I’m keeping. I don’t know why I’m keeping some of them but I find myself unable to throw them out. I’m definitely keeping my years of DayMinder brand desk calendars. Those contain both personal and professional information that I hope to re-use someday so there's a reason for that. A thing I am hesitant to throw away that I have no reason to keep is the resume of a guy who used to work here who I was pretty good friends with at some point but our friendship deteriorated when he advanced to a position that he was perhaps not ready for in an industry that he didn’t really want to work in anymore. I separate the professional from the personal pretty easily but this guy wasn’t really good at doing that. In fact I remember his last day quite clearly, I bought him a going away gift and took him out and got him good and loaded at lunch time and he was completely surprised and didn’t know how to react. I let him leave early (better to not have a drunken soon-to-be-ex-employee going around the office) and I remember thinking as we shook hands that I’d never hear another word from him despite his happy-drunk “I’ll definitely stay in touch, thanks for everything” parting words. It’s been four years almost to the day and I haven’t heard a word. So having a copy of his resume from an old file is sort of like having a bridge to the past before our friendship had run its course (or even begun), before a whole lot of people I know had died, before a lot of things both bad and good occurred.
Eh, there’s no turning back the clock. Everything ends sooner or later. Friendships run their course, jobs change, people die. I might as well chuck that document too. It’s only a piece of paper, as disposable as the rest of us.
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