What are these people doing? How do they have that many clicks in them each day. They just stare at their screens, furrowed, and scroll scroll scroll, click click fucking click. I’m losing my eyesight. The floor is carpeted and the carpet is a combination of thickly woven browns, dutiful and lifeless. A volley of voices picks up as if carried into the room on a breeze that could not possibly penetrate the walls and glass and I can’t hear myself stare and scroll and click anymore. No, I can hear myself click. Click. There goes a sliver of soul. Click. My brain is blunting. Click.

Once, the power went out in the building and we were all paralyzed. No work could be done, no scrolls could be scrolled, no clicks could be clicked, and many of us left, including me. But I did not leave in order to find another place to work, however, as most others did. I left to find quiet and to find sound, to stop and have a little roadside picnic because sometimes the most important part of work is knowing when not to do it.

Stalker is a Soviet-era film from the year I was born, and I was born on a Monday. The red light is blinking on the conference phone on the table near where I sit. It’s showing us we have a message no one will ever check. Today, I feel like that blinking light. One day, someone will figure out how to access the phone’s voicemail mailbox and the light will be extinguished.