I have a habit of leaning too close to my computer monitor at work. This week there was a minute where I was hunched in close enough to feel the heat radiating from its mechanical innards.
It was hardly discernible, I felt it first on the tip of my nose. When I realized what it was, I turned my head sideways and pressed my face closer. I felt the heat on the side of my face and heard the small sound of unknown complications carried out behind the silicone screen.
This is the guts of an office job, everything channeled into and out of a computer. There are moments of importance away from the screen's slow-death glare, but for the first time ever, the computer is my warrant and sanction.
I hope I'm forgiven for thinking office work was a static world filled with small talk and weak coffee. In my head it was an environment just tolerable enough for a worker to maintain their sanity for 30 years and then pack up and retire.
It's better than that though (obviously). An office isn't the ideal place to be in the summer, but it is in the winter. I walk past construction crews on the way work in the morning and I'm not envious of people tying rebar as freezing winds howl up from the Bedford Basin.
Unlike those construction workers, my walk to work is often the only exercise I'll get for the day. I've managed to stay in shape, but not the shape you're in when you're on your feet and moving all day. When you work in an office exercise is about avoiding total mobility meltdown, when you work outside, fitness is such a given they don't even mention it in the hiring package.
A brain can be fit too. I felt fatigue in my head my first few days at the office, an exhaustion I've rarely felt. This was social tiredness, the type experienced by people in the service industry. My job is an endless mix of menial tasks and falsely enthusiastic phone calls. I struggle to keep track of tons of little things and the new work environment ripped me apart for the first few days. After working only eight or nine hours I'd come home and stare at the ceiling, my head like the aftermath of a tornado.
The brain-tired is made worse by my office's lack of break culture. Some offices have lunch time yoga and rooms full of rubik's cubes - not where I work, it's been the worst change since moving indoors. But, even if we had an office environment like EA Sports, I'm not working a job that requires creative space. I'm the tree planter of desk workers and when you're doing mental tree planting, the need for breaks doesn't manifest itself as it does when you're out in the bush.
People working outside take breaks because it's necessary, you can't eat and shovel at the same time and only a celibate masochist would ever finish lunch early to go back to work. At my office I eat at my desk and sigh so hard the walls shake.
Within this mind grind there have been great moments, I was tickled when they set me up with a land line at my desk, complete with message machine and hold button. Those office phones were a white collar wonder to me for years. I'm so into my phone that my confidence creeps into my conversations: "Hey are we talking on the phone here? Cool, yeah, real crisp sound on these landlines hey? Anyway, sure is good to be in from the rain huh? HA, definitely, definitely, TGIF right? Ok, I'll send you a copy of those forms."
Also, my boss will sometimes involve me in discussions of consequence wherein I get to state MY opinions, and who wouldn't love that? Granted, these opinions count for 0.1% of decisions.
Still, these discussions are the best part of working in an office. Negotiating with others, thinking critically and tip toeing your way to a finished project for people to judge - that's the human mind at work and it's as worthy as any digging in the dirt I've ever done.
And looking back, that's why I leaned in to the warmth of my computer monitor, because though I enjoy the work, my labour background pines for some marker of work actually happening.
I communicate from the computer, it's where I've made suggestions and found material, where I've pained myself over email tone and talked nervously on Skype.
The computer has been my partner on the TV beat, its quiet hum synced up with my brain, we can do great things.