I’m waiting for the bus today, this second day of work and third day in Van, I guess.
Yesterday was Irony Day. A year or so ago, I read a book called Escape from Cubicle Nation. Kindle version to be specific. Another in a series of entrepreneur related books I read in the months and year after getting laid off and striking out on my own. It’s a good read. This genre of books all start to sound the same after awhile, but Pamela Slim has a witty voice which makes it an easy, yet useful, read.
Anyway. So it’s a bit ironic to find myself in a cubicle. My brain rewound itself yesterday, as it seems prone to do lately, and discovered I have never actually worked in a cubicle. It’s either been an open office plan or me at a desk in an otherwise empty space. Companies were always “expanding” and stuck me in whatever space they had just acquired but hadn’t figured out what to do with yet. Or, at home in my own office, comfy chair and a beautiful view of the prairie.
I wasn’t sure how I’d like a cube. They seem so confining. When I was there briefly in May, I took the empty office as that was the only place open at the time. The office hadn’t been built out and staffed at its current levels, and the empty office is also where visitors like myself, former self perhaps, sat and worked. So when I arrived yesterday, I figured I’d just inhabit the space now.
Nope. In a cube with my Support mates which I’m finding I like better, oddly enough. There’s chatter, interaction and the space seems as big as the office.
Bonus: I can swivel in my chair and see mountains! Walk a few steps to a large window bank and see more mountains! Sounds kind of lame, I know, but mountains have an effect on me. I’m giving some serious thought to shipping my couch and putting up against the wall next to the ping pong room and making that my office. That way, I can sit, work and stare at mountains all day. Heaven!
This is one of the things I knew would be hard as I was leaving my prairie view behind. Swapping it for street (in the empty office) or no view (cube) was unappealing, I admit. Having visited the office for an all hands meeting in December, though, I got a better survey of the whole office space and felt better knowing that I could just walk to a different part of the office or go outside and see mountains. And In my temporary dwellings, I can’t turn a corner without seeing mountains.
I did not expect a cube to see spacious, social and have mountains with a swivel of the chair though. Needless to say, it’s been a welcome surprise.
Now to decorate the space with some things from home which, sadly will have to wait. Apparently Customs prefers much more descriptive terms than “clothes,” “shoes,” “boots” and “books.” When I filled out the FedEx Ground form and asked what I should put, since I didn’t know, that’s what I was told. And now my stuff sits at the border.
I feel another blog post coming on about how to ship stuff outside the US, even just across the border to Canada.