Midday Murmurs

June 7

1:50 p.m.

Y'all. I've got nothing here. Nothing. My bosses don't send me e-mail. I'm given tasks that take literally ten minutes to complete. Half the office went away this afternoon to do off-site job stuff, and they're the half of the office that normally gives me work to do. I'm zipping through Patrick's archives. I've read just about everything on Salon. I'm all excited about 2:30 getting here because that's about the earliest time I can go check the mail. My eyes are getting twitchy from all this screen-staring, but this is it, all I can do.

Journallers. You people aren't updating your journals often enough. I'm sorry. I hate to say it. I can't help it. It's true. I need three or four entries from each of you each day, people. This is a medical need.

And you readers. Why aren't you sending me e-mail? Send me e-mail. Give me something to live for. Give me some content, or I'm going to gouge my own head off with a letter opener. Tell me about your cat. Tell me that you hate my taste in music. Tell me about the time you saw Tanya Donelly at the 7-11. Anything. Please. I'll even write back, probably-- I've got time.

I've answered almost all my poetry slush, that's what I did this morning-- there's only about six submissions left, and I'll probably get to them tonight. I've been rejecting poems and breaking hearts all morning. I'm still getting good submissions, for the most part, but I'm being picky-- besides the one I bought yesterday, I haven't seen anything that I have to have.

The office is not entirely empty. Were the office entirely empty, I might kick back and read Sleeping In Flame. But I've got some co-workers wandering around, and I suspect they're doing work, and I feel bad not doing work if they are, but they don't have anything to give me. I'm answering phones. I'm like some sort of trophy admin. I'm a receptionist who does nothing all day but look pretty, only it's not like we get customers here, we're not even remotely open to the public, so I'm not even looking pretty for anyone. I am not writing manuals. I am not editing web site content (though I was told recently that no work whatsoever got done on the web site in my absence, so presumably I'll have a great mountain of work to do soon, once I can talk to my boss, who hasn't returned my e-mail, but anyway).

I could write. I should write. I could work on my Mr. Li story, which got put on hold while I finished "Little Gods." The Mr. Li story is cool, and I could finish it in two hours, probably. But I have trouble writing at work, really getting into fiction, because there are frequent interruptions-- phone calls to deal with, incoming faxes, little ten-minute tasks. If I sat in a little cubicle unbothered for hours at a time, I'd write, but the job's a bit more interactive than that.

Which doesn't mean I don't have great grey swaths of empty time, oh no, it doesn't mean that at all.

Aren't you glad I'm back at work, and updating so frequently?