face time

as my time at poets & writers winds rapidly to a close, my mind is already painting over my experiences and memories with that aesthetically pleasing gloss of nostalgia. i don't fight it.

one thing i really will miss here though, stalgia or no stalgia, is my office arrangement. i have a nice work space constructed of 2 large desks that wrap around me providing a corner in which to sit and feel safe, much like a fort. my desk is in the same room as sara and tim, but since we all have little wraparound safety corner desks, we feel secluded enough to ignore each other politely and confidently blog in lieu of working. the job i am moving to does not provide safety corners. the office is a loft space, sectioned off into 3 part separated by glass doors/walls, which to an isolationist like myself make very little sense. i do not know who sits in the western glass cage. the eastern cage is the conference room. the middle cage is where i will sit, along with everyone else. there is a big table in the middle piled high with cool (perhaps also free) stuff, and on either side desks are grouped together by what seems to be a loose definition of department. what discomfits me most about this set up is that the ad department sits in the 4-desk square arrangement preferred by my elementary school teachers. all. facing. in.

as an isolationist with a terribly shaky grasp on how to properly utilize eye contact, this concerns me. so i've come up with several potential ways to handle the situation.

1) set up a cardboard cut out of a white picket fence and a row of potted plants. creates the illusion of warmth and light, while also being a wall.

2) clutter the edges of my desk with framed photos of all my friends. creates the illusion of sociability, while also being a wall.

3) position my computer so that i am cut off from everyone's line of vision, and stick large googly eyes on the back of the screen. creates the illusion of eye contact, while also being a wall.

i'm sure my options will become more clear once i actually sit down and set up.

4 more days!