About Me

This is my desk at work:

Before I go any further, let me answer the obvious questions:

• Yes, that's dinner you see there
• I know Easter was almost two months ago
• If you haven't tried Li Hing Mui, you haven't lived

Moving on, this is my desk at home. Look closely and you'll catch my elegant dining table in front too:

I spend most of my waking hours in one of the two places. As a consequence, I’ve gained 15 pounds since coming to work at my company five years ago.

Here’s the thing - and I’ve actually thought about it, even drawing schematics and thinking through the specific wording I would use - I could try to save myself. I could figure out how to construct a time machine. I imagine it as a glistening aluminum box, covered with electrical wires, pneumatic hoses, and pressure gauges.

I would set the clock on my contraption for the terrible, fateful year that I joined my firm. My past self would be lying on the couch around midnight, watching reruns of Law & Order SVU when I’d burst into being, terrible to behold, covering the living room in a shower of sparks. I'd wear some kind of futuristic get-up, to lend my future self an air of credibility. Maybe something silver. Probably boots. Definitely a jumpsuit. I’d grab my past self by the shoulders, yank myself/her up off the couch, and try to shake some sense into us.

“Look, you idiot” I’d scream, “If you don’t get off your @ss, you're still gonna be in exactly the same miserable pathetic place in 2012!”

The thing is, I know exactly what would happen. After the initial shock and the uncomfortable silence that followed, my past self would look down in confusion. She/I would say, "I recognize those boots ... " and try to curl up on the couch again. So I'd leave. Get back in my silver box and go home. My past self would stew over it instead of sleeping that night. But by morning she/I would have accepted her/my fate.

Now this might surprise some of you, but it doesn't me.

There’s a psychological concept called learned helplessness. Here’s generally how the classic set of experiments (Martin Seligman et al.) went:

Poor Dog 3 has learned that there's absolutely nothing he can do to stop the painful experience, so he might as well just suffer through it. 

"Okay, that's a horribly depressing story", you now might say, "but how exactly did this happen to you?"

Funny you should ask. I've been doing some research over the past few weeks, and I think I might have an idea ... well, hang on - unfortunately I hear someone coming, so that's a story for next time ...

The Beginning

What’s that? I think I saw it yesterday evening, but I’m not even sure any more.

I was at work. Miserable. Walking down the hall with Tom, pretending to listen as he started expounding on all the changes the team needed to make to the deck before tomorrow's meeting. That's the thing about Tom- it always takes him ten minutes to find the right euphemisms to say "These slides are complete nonsensical crap." He also tends to forget that he tells us exactly what to put on the slides - normally writing out each bullet point word-for-word on the whiteboard in a completely illegible hand. Hours later, the team will puzzle over it - "Do you remember what he was saying there? Does that say 'deepen our understanding' or 'leper on Unitarian'?"

Right then, out of the corner of my eye I saw that ... thing ... there behind the glass door of the phone room on my right. Suddenly everything felt completely clear and completely terrifying. Except - and this sounds crazy, but I'm going to add it - the thing looked like it was wearing a navy blue pinstripe Jos. A. Bank suit and talking into a Bluetooth headset.

By the time I turned my head to look at it straight on and blinked my eyes, it was gone. I just saw the empty hall, a string of dark offices, and Tom. I don't even think he noticed that I had stopped listening to him. He's probably used to it. He squinted at me and handed me 116 slides with a bunch of scribbled notes and stains from a Potbelly sandwich on them.

I glanced at one of them, which was new, and handwritten. It had all the hallmarks of a Tom slide. Tons of new data we didn't have, confusing granular breakdowns of information, and waterfall charts. No client in their right mind would want to see a slide like this.

"So you're comfortable making those changes before the 9 am meeting tomorrow?" He asked. It was 8:30 pm.

"Sure," I said. It's a testament to my complete lack of engagement with my job that I was able to take it in stride - both the changes and what I saw in the phone room. Things that happen at work only dance around about 4% of my consciousness.

Anyway, at this point, I've been up for two days straight, so I’m probably not thinking clearly anymore, but it seems like either (A) I'm losing my mind or (B) there’s something really, really wrong. Either way I thought I'd write it down. If it’s option (A), then all of this will just be good entertainment. If it’s option (B), then people should know.

Wait. I need to tell you who I am before you make the mistake of hiring me.