“Now and then he would wonder what had sustained him through all those years. He had forgotten the savage, joyless, implacable blind drive which, working itself out, was enough in itself, and which, in its very joylessness, was a kind of joy.”–Robert Penn Warren
The place where I work is housed on the third floor of a brick building within an office park in Waltham. My office is in a back hallway which includes five other offices, four of which are unoccupied (and the remaining one is occupied by a woman who mostly works from home). In my office, the fluorescent light runs the length of the wall opposite the side of the office with my desk, and the glow is directed upward from a shade that covers the underside of the bulb. For whatever reason that light, along with the rest of the building’s interior lights, is just a little dimmer than one might imagine it should be. In my office, this means the off-white wall has a little hint of gray in it from the shadows. The effect is at once quieting and calming; the muted light seems to beget tranquil conversation. I would guess that many people would be put off by this, preferring instead a brightly lit, lively office with un-tinted exterior windows and conversations one can hear through walls. I am not one of those people.
The start to my job has been full of work which, like the building, I’m sure many people would find off-putting. It has involved a lot of focus on minor details, and rethinking things which I’ve thought about several times over. I spend the day in a state of cold composure, staring at a computer screen, typing occasionally, but mostly just thinking, “what’s being said here?” and “how can I make it read better?”
In some ways, this job reminds me of the moving job which, strangely enough, is probably the one I liked most out of all of the ones I’ve had. While moving, I spent all day repeating the same actions, mindlessly walking up and down stairs and the ramp to the truck, carrying various sized boxes and furniture, just putting one foot in front of the other until I made it home and collapsed on the couch in my parents’ house, with my shirt covered in salt marks and my arms and legs turned to gelatin. That job required work without question, drive without ambition. It taught me that endurance is in the mind, and that by detaching my body from my mind, I could push myself to physical feats I wouldn’t have expected.
Mental endurance, I have found, is in the same vein as the physical variety, except it isn’t possible to detach my mind from my mind (now, that would be impressive!). But, there is a way to detach one’s mind from distracting thoughts. That way, things like, “This is boring” or, “Look, a Google ad!” don’t gain any sway. That’s what I do now–I sit at my computer screen, I make notes, I mark changes, I add commas, I correct grammar, and I do that for eight hours with very few interruptions and virtually no distraction, until I get into my car and turn my mind off for awhile (which, by the way, makes driving home a little scary; let’s just say there is some drifting and there are a few delayed brakings). What’s weird is that I like it. I like it kind of a lot.
I am not sure a job like this could keep me going forever because, while it does have my mind firing repeatedly, I’m not sure it has it firing on all cylinders. That said, if all I have these next few months is a drive to do what’s asked of me in the dimly-lit confines of my office, that is enough.
As always, keep your head down, strive for balance, and stride with one foot in front of the other.
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