Minutes

I don't have a mind made for meetings. This has always been true, from the moment I entered the working world. Sit me around a table with a group of others, pens gripped in their hands, fluorescent lights above us buzzing and my body appears present while my brain is out to lunch. My mind works in a way that absorbs every detail of the room around me anyway. So, when given leave to sit quietly facing other people and allow me to get away with half listening and I'm taking a trip. It's why I'll likely never be a manager anywhere. Managers of things see value in meetings. I see talking in circles and fodder for characters.

I took notes. Reading them back now, I learned a few things and none of them had anything to do with the other. For example:

• There is still money in the budget to buy testing guides and my boss has incongruously sparkling nails. They match nothing on her person, not her age or style or personality.

• A coworker was brazenly reading the paper during the meeting. If my boss noticed this, she ignored it. I suppose I can't point fingers since I wasn't listening to anything that was being said, really. 

• Administration is pushing us all to do more things, regardless of whether or not they are needed or make sense and the break room where the staff meets, eats lunch, and takes naps is located underneath the public toilets. Whenever anyone upstairs flushes, there is a sound not unlike a dying lawnmower being revved. It is difficult to eat lunch in that room and not think about the general public flushing the toilet.

•  I'm not being given a key to get into the building, ever and I've worked here for six months and I know for certain that it isn't for me and I'm depressed about it. 

That's what I learned in today's meeting and it was just as productive as every other meeting I've ever attended.

I had yesterday off, during which I did some freelance work and wrote quite a bit. I had started a long blog post about being very sick ten years ago but as I was writing it, it turned out to be the beginning of a short story. So it likely won't make an appearance on the blog but it marks one of the only times my writing a blog post functioned in the way I envisioned it would: as a jumpstart to my fiction. Who knows if it will become anything but I thought it was interesting.

Other than that, not much else is going on. February is mercifully nearly done and I reach out for springtime like Indiana Jones reaches for the Holy Grail. I can almost reach it.

I've been wanting to spend some time in an art museum lately. The last visit I took was to PS1 and I had a buzz going and it was just inundated with the one factor that generally ruins art museums for me: too many people. I just remember looking at a series of miniature cities that had mismatched landmarks and what I got from it was confusion. There was also a group of young women who kept asking people to take their photo in front of one of the art pieces. So PS1 is out. Where else should I go? I'm thinking about Expressionism. I just feel in the mood to see the world in bold colors and jagged edges, maybe a distorted face or two. Do you want to come with me?