EVICTED!

Hours turn to days; days to week; week to…more than a week. Where does the time go? My eyes have been hovering about two inches away from a bright, flickering computer monitor for the better part of three weeks now. My rods and cones are straining from exhaustion. My retinas have begun to detach themselves. I think I’m developing carpal tunnel for the first time since my teen years when Mary McHotty got that new mini-skirt. Work has been especially worky lately. It has gotten to the point where I’ve begun wearing a spelunker’s helmet on my off hours and redirected the light beam straight down into my eyes just to keep the pupils from dilating. I don’t want them going soft (and wide) on me now.

Every quarter end is particularly busy. I’m not an accountant though with the way I celebrate an unexpected $20 in the family budget you could be excused for thinking that. No, I’m one of the good guys.* My job facilitates people getting paid. Of course, those people are sometimes health insurance carriers or people with illness or terminal diseases but let’s focus on the positive. A $250 check in the mail always distracts one, at least temporarily, from renal disease. Or so I assume. I once won a free Coke from a bottle cap game and completely forgot about my foot blister so, extrapolating that out…

On top of all that, my company has EVICTED me from my plush, 6x6 neutral colored cubicle! In the frenzied quarter end rush, an e-mail BINGed into my e-box telling me to e-getthehellout. In two weeks.

I’m not fired. No, they made it pretty clear that the company has a place for someone with my squared jaw and ample shoulders. (I could tell they were implying this by their choice of the more angular Courier New text type for my email versus the others' Arial.) It’s just that this place is now at home. Or at a local coffee shop where I can be ‘that guy’ sitting at a table for 6 hours sipping a mocha latte and wearing a Bluetooth.

So, on top of finger flying, retina burning, blog depriving work, I’ve also got to pack up my cube, carve out a place at home – which for the time being will be my kitchen table – and move the hell out of the office. I’ve been evicted. My cube has been foreclosed (did you already read the footnote? Bankers are jerks, aren’t they?) I’ve spent the last two days shredding documents like former officials holding torture memos. These documents seemed important when they were at work and stored in my desk. Now that I need to carry them home? Funny. They don’t seem so important anymore.

And now I have to deal with working from home issues. I really don’t need to shower anymore. I can wear my boxer shorts and a t-shirt all day, all night, and all the next day again (and the day after that? Maybe.) Shaving? Not a chance. Deodorant will be optional. I’ll be sitting within feet of my running shoes. Lunch time runs are now a reality! I don’t even have to shower when I get back. I can simply call into my next meeting with salty sweat hardening to my temples like concrete freed from the tired old "non-offensive odor" and "wearing the same clothes on multiple days" social memes.

There are some real advantages to this. Oprah. Dr. Phil. Is Springer still on? I don’t know but I’ll soon find out!

I will miss the anal symphony Cube Farter performs for me every afternoon. But I can create one of my own now. I’ve learned my pinching techniques from the master.

Just me, my dog, my computer and phone, my boxers, my running shoes and no social customs or expectations hanging over my head.

This can’t end well.

Happy trails.

* Incidentally, with all the well deserved negative press health insurance companies are getting these days, let’s not forget who really wears the black hat in this struggling economy. Bankers. We shouldn’t forget about the economy-killing, panda-murdering bankers.