Notice

Everything dies. Empires fall, buildings crumble, statues tumble, names forgotten. But this meeting - would this meeting ever end? She blinked furiously trying to keep her attention from waning. Swaddled her office cardigan around herself to take another breath in the air-conditioning sealed conference room. Her coffee had already cooled in the first 15 minutes of the third bullet point of the agenda which was actually the fifth topic covered. The pages of her notes remained as blank as her stare. 

Everyone else seemed so attentive, so interested, so vested in what this new strategy was promising to bring. And yet she didn’t hear anything new. She kept her ears open for the groundbreaking innovation, but it was more of a soft-soaked soil that could potentially lead to seeds sprouting but more likely to summon a sinkhole, draining down costs, actual ideas, and all motivation. 

What was this going to take? To make it work, to make her want to work, to tell herself to get up, makeup her face, make up the reasons why this was the path to follow. No rabbits to chase, no waterfalls to cascade. She thought about the creature comforts - her car, her home, her cravings. Those needed to be fed. Those she needed to feed. But there must be another way. 

Where do you find a new path when you are already on one?

The shuffling of notes and disintegration of attention around her alerted the close of the meeting. The agenda had been set for 90 minutes and none of them would be spared. This was the end, for now, until the next week when time would again slow and dip into the gravitational field of the Big Conference Room orbiting around the star of the SMART projector. She prepared for landing back at her cubicle, refilling fuel in the break room. 

Landing sequence initiated - logging back in to the time tracking mechanism - while carrying on the covert mission of scanning job apps. Maybe now there would be an opportunity with her name on it, looking for her exact qualifications and experience. Was that the pursuit - to keep going on the same trajectory, just in a different galaxy? Was she bound to keep orbiting around what she was good at or able to carve a new path, a separate one, even on a different plane altogether, doing just what she enjoyed, watching the stars float by?

She looked at the office directory pinned to the cloth divider. She had been there almost three years and yet none of the names were familiar to her. Names defined by titles. Titles describing positions. Positions exposing ranks. Were any of them hints of where she wanted to go or who she wanted to be? Shortly thereafter, another shuffle and shift in the air, swinging doors signaling the exodus for lunch. She gathered her keys and phone and purse, hanging her cardigan on the back of her chair. She considered for a moment bringing it with her in case she decided not to return, but she knew better. 

Over the next hour, she wondered if she might overhear an exasperated HR manager venting how hard it is to find someone just like her. Or perhaps she’d get a call from a former colleague about a new role that just opened up that would be great for her. Maybe she could really focus, scroll farther, and find the right job description. She stood in line, order in mind, as fantasies filled with possibilities. Yet, when her number was called, she picked up her tray and looked around at her fellow drones hovering over the daily lunch special, seeing nothing new would come. 

There was no Uncle Sam poster, outstretched finger pointing. There was no billboard with promises of riches without hiring a personal injury attorney. The overcast skies would not part, shining a light on the destination. No illuminated path, no parking lot spotlight, no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. The din itself was the marker that if things could be this boring, perhaps, alternatively, they could be just as interesting to the opposite extent. Couldn’t they? It didn’t have to be a lightning bolt but instead just a dead bulb that flickered out and just wouldn’t, couldn’t switch on anymore. Maybe she was the sign that life did not have to be this way. Her choice to carve the path into a new forest, even going all the way back to the parking lot to do so could be the signal that change would come, could come, if she chose it. 

She looked back at her phone. Ten minutes left to bus her tray, drive back to the building, take the elevator up to the sixth floor, and put her cardigan back on. This was what it was. Her heart began to race not in anticipation but anxiety. Not a fear of the unknown but a knowing of the banality waiting. The routine of the routine under the hum of the noise cancelling fan.  

She parked back at her shady spot in the far corner of the lot. With the windows still open, she turned off the engine pretending to only be a temporary visitor. The behemoth stood in front of her, a void where her energy drained like the runoff into the storm sewer. She summoned her spirit to just finish the rest of the day, promising to hope - no, look for something better in the evening. Until there, she just had to go back in. 

Walking into the chill of refrigerant, the cold blasted her face. She trudged into the elevator capsule with the rest, pressing her button. Her stomach sank as the floor rose, one by one depositing the destined to their designated stops. On the final floor, as she stepped off the elevator the red light down the hall caught her eye. She looked toward the stairwell, above it glared, “EXIT.” She had not taken the stairs in quite a while.