cheryl santa maria

After spilling a cup of tea on a signed agreement and absent-mindedly shredding a (very important and unpaid) invoice, I decided I needed a break.

One of my favourite things to do when I’m stressed is to take a walk. There isn’t much scenery around my office building though, so I spend a lot of time in the four-level, above-ground parking lot. The lot is almost always deserted, which I love. Being able to wander around undisturbed gives me a much-needed feeling of invisibility.

I was making my way around the first level when I heard music, a jazzy melody coming from what sounded like a live saxophone. I followed it up to the fourth floor and there, in an isolated corner devoid of cars, stood a mousey-looking, middle aged-man. His hands moved with expert precision over keys of his saxophone and he was playing the most beautiful music.

He looked like your typical office dweller, complete with an employee ID tag on his belt loop, wrinkled dress pants and a bald spot in the middle of his head. A saxophone case was on the floor with a blackberry tossed carelessly inside. Sheet music was on a ledge, held in place with a Tim Horton’s coffee cup.

I pictured the man driving into work that morning with his saxophone tucked under his seat, excitedly plotting the perfect time to sneak away from his desk.

The whole thing left me feeling sad.

People tell you to get a full-time job and buy a house and that’s supposed to make you happy. What they don’t tell you is that the “stability” you get from being an employee and the mortgage that keeps you at a sub-par job for thirty years comes at the cost of your true aspirations.

I don’t want to have to sneak away and live my dreams for a few minutes a day. I want to live them all of the time, but I guess that’s a luxury most of us can’t afford.

I went back the next day and the man was gone. I haven’t seen him since. I guess he has more important things to do with his time.

I guess we all do.

Thanks to my move last week, my morning commute has increased exponentially.  Now, instead of driving 35-50 minutes/way, I can expect a 60-90 minute drive. 

Double that if there’s been an accident.

 The actual kilometre distance hasn’t changed much – from 27 to 40/way – but I now have to take a different highway.

Unfortunately for me, it’s a highway that never seems to move.

I’ve tried everything to lessen my commute. Now that school is back in session, residential areas are crowded with buses and screaming kids. The toll route is expensive and out of the way, and every time I’ve tried going through the country I get stuck at the railway tracks.

I’m a total ball of stress. Yesterday, after a particulary daunting drive, I had to take a 15 minute walk around the office building before going inside just to stop myself from shaking.

I used to love my car but now the thought of it sends pain shooting down my back. I can’t even drive to the corner store without unconsciously biting my nails and the most inconsequential things – like a turning blinker that’s been left on for too long – cause my blood to boil.

If you see a Ford Focus being driven by a girl who looks like she should be sitting on a phone book, I strongly advise you to get out of the way. The constant stress of driving is turning me into a loose canon and if you drive like a moron, I will be inclined to roll down my window and yell at you. Yelling has become my only source of release.

I have friends in Vancouver. The province is much smaller than Ontario and it has a superior transit system, meaning you don’t need a car to get around. That, combined with the beautiful weather, stunning scenery and the laid back attitude of the British Columbians leaves me wondering what the hell I’m doing in Toronto.

Yeah, I know: we’ve all gotta eat.

But if you ask me, there’s something very, very wrong with the way many of us go about earning our money.

Three hour daily commutes + not enough money + little to no vacation time + the inability to get a good nights’ sleep 5 days a week = what, exactly?

I’m not quite sure.

I guess it’s time to re-evaluate my options, but I’ll save that for another time, because today is Friday, praise Cheetos.

And what does Friday mean exactly?

Well, for starters, it means I’m one day closer to my impending doom.

Great.

I think I’m due for a vacation.

My negativity knows no bounds today.

Allow me to introduce you to some of my former co-workers:

First there was Tara.  Tara was a clueless middle manager with an important daddy and that’s the only reason she had a job in the first place.  Then there was Sally, the office bitch.  She was sleeping with her very married boss.  Albert was the passive-aggressive mail room guy. He gave people the finger when they had their backs turned.  Hilda was the office gossip (she’s how I found out about Sally).  Chad was the young hotshot. Nobody had ever spoken to him directly because he was always on his Blackberry.

And then there was Darlene.

Darlene decorated her cubicle with Beanie Babies and pictures of kittens. She wore plastic earrings and sweaters with wolves on them.  Her computer monitor was covered with Winnie the Pooh stickers.

Darlene was fifty-two years old.

I liked her, though. Darlene was friendly and sincere, which is more than I can say for most people.  Sure, she had her quirks, but she was a great lady to work with, except for one small thing.

Every morning at 10:55 , Darlene would heat up a bag of popcorn. Three minutes later,  the smell would reach my cubicle.

After six consecutive months I started fantasizing about throwing the microwave out the window. Rather than ask Darlene to give the popcorn a rest (I’m kinda passive-aggressive), I started taking my lunch at 11:00.  Problem solved.

If you work in a cubicle, you’ve probably worked with a Tara and a Sally, an Albert and a Hilda, and a Chad.

Chances are you’ve also worked with someone like Darlene – but in your case, it might not be popcorn wafting into your personal space.  It could be curry, or maybe Kraft Dinner.  Perhaps it’s last night’s takeout; mmmm … that’s always a treat.

If you’d rather live without the smell of other people’s food in your face, you can always try talking to your co-workers about the situation, but that depends on the co-worker. You could do what I did and compromise  or, you could  opt for the least popular (but often most effective) method of getting your point across:

You could resort to physical violence.

It won’t win you any popularity contests and it might cost you your job but it leaves a lasting impression. Violence in the workplace isn’t terribly uncommon, either: one in ten employees admit to resorting to it at one point or another.

(But that’s probably not your best bet.  While you could resort to physical violence, I’m not saying that you should. You’ll probably wind up losing your job, and the criminal record that you’ll no doubt acquire will probably hinder your chances of securing future employment).

Tons of studies have been conducted on this sort of thing. Stress is on the rise in North America and it’s responsible for a slew of diseases and disorders. Obesity is on the rise. Divorce rates steadily climb – and everything seems to boil down to the fact that most people are underpaid and overworked.

In other words: cubicles are evil.

They’re so evil that they’ve become a breeding ground for a new psychological phenomenon. Induced by heavy workloads, loss of sleep, and poor eating habits it is known as desk rage. Workplace stress causes about one million people to miss work every day and, according to a small survey released in 2001, 42 percent of workers report incidents of yelling and verbal abuse in their offices .

This doesn’t apply to all cubicle dwellers though. Believe it or not, some people actually enjoy their jobs, but those of us who don’t need to take a long hard look at our career paths. We can blame our coworkers as much as we like but at the end of each and every working day, we are a part of the problem. After all, we choose to work in these environments.

I understand. This isn’t how you pictured your life. It’s not how I pictured mine either. No child thinks they will grow up and become a corporate cog. It’s no use complaining though, unless you’re going to do something about it.

You can remain at the same company or bounce around from place to place, doing the exact same thing over and over again, in the vague hope that things will be better in the next cubicle, while  continuing to collect your mediocre pay cheques until you either retire or get laid-off, or you can quit and try to find something that’s more suited to your wants and needs.

Those are your only options.

On that note, have a good weekend.

There are those who live and those who exist.

Then there the ones who want to experience life but can’t because they’re trapped inside bodies that are riddled with disease.

A child sits on a hospital bed and the doctors don’t know what to do. They ran all the tests and they operated twice but the child continues to die.

Her heart is weak and she needs a new one. Sometimes she can’t breathe and sometimes she can’t speak. Medication has ruined her immune system and now she’s battling pneumonia.

There is nothing left to do but sit and wait for a donor to die.

As the child sits on her hospital bed, a man sits on his couch. He’s plopped down in front of the television after a long day at the office. When his shows are finished he will log onto the internet and mindlessly surf the web. Then he’ll go to bed.

He spends ninety minutes a day stuck in traffic and forty-two and a half hours a week crammed into a tiny cubicle, working for a boss he doesn’t respect. On weekends he housecleans and watches even more TV.

He will live like this until the day he dies, thirty-five years from now.

A sick child sits on a hospital bed, begging for a chance to live.

A healthy man sits on his couch, completely wasting his life.

Between this child and this man I wonder who is worse off.

[Written November 1, 2007]

photo credit

I used to own a pair of Betta fish named Phinnaeus and Groggy.

Phinnaeus would jump on command and Groggy would follow me around the room from inside his tank. They were very, very cool.

All Phin and Groggy needed to be happy was clean water and food. As far as they were concerned the entire universe existed inside a two-gallon tank. I was sitting there one day, watching them swim around. Around and around and around. Always in the same circles, every single day, for their entire lives.

We humans can do just about anything we want. If we work and study hard enough, we can go to the moon. We can climb the highest mountains. We can soar over any ocean we please. Phin and Groggy didn’t know that a world existed outside of their tanks and even if they did, they could never have access to it. But us? we’re fully aware of our (practically) limitless surroundings.

Yet many of us choose to remain inside our own little fish bowls.

Most of us tend to stagnate once we reach a level of comfort in our relationships, careers and education. Once we get into these zones it’s easy for us to slip into a routine and then maintain it until we die.

If you’ve lived in the same rut for years and years you’re probably oblivious to the fact that there is art, music, film, literature, people and countries for you to discover.

Life is super, super short. If you want to spend your days sitting in a cubicle and your evenings sitting on a couch, that’s not for me to judge.

Just remember that there is a big, beautiful world out there.

It’s up to you to discover it, though.

My fifteen year-old cousin is trying to decide what she wants to do with the rest of her life. I had a talk with her a while back and I was astonished, and so proud, of the questions she asked me, questions like:

“Do you like your job?”
(No).

“Do you see yourself doing this job forever?”
(No).

“Do you get any fulfillment out of your job?”
(No).

“Why do you do it, then?”
(Good question, kid. I ask myself the same thing every day).

I asked her what she wanted to do. She said she didn’t know but that her future career would have to meet certain criteria. It would have to be something she enjoys, something meaningful, and something that keeps her learning. I asked her where the hell she got that kind of wisdom. When I was fifteen I spent most of my time locked up in my room being what kids these days would call emo.

She said her teachers had challenged her to think about the future.

Wow.

High school teachers are challenging kids to think?

When did they start doing that?

No offense to any high school staff out there but when I was a teenager my teachers spent half their time on strike and the other half of their time on work to rule. Between their union meetings and their picketing, they didn’t have much time or energy left to challenge us to do anything. We had one course at my school called “college prep” but all we did was cut pictures out of magazines and talk about television shows. There was no talk about the “future” in my high school. When I applied to university at seventeen I chose film, not because I had a career path planned out, but because I wanted to do something in the arts.

Nobody sat me down and told me that a Bachelor of Arts is essentially worthless in the job market. In fact, nobody sat me down and told me anything, which is a bit of a problem because I was a kid and I had a blind trust in academia. I figured that going to university would guarantee me a fulfilling career.

Not so much.

Here I am today, 27 years old, and I still have no idea what I want to do with my life. I’m contemplating going back to school again, for the third time, in an attempt to find something I’ll enjoy.

I know I can’t go around blaming my high school teachers for all the decisions I’ve made. I’m an adult now and I have to take ownership over my (lack) of career and my professional and academic choices.  While things haven’t been bad for me, they definitely haven’t panned out as I had envisioned.

Not by a long shot.

I’m glad they’re teaching kids these days to get informed and ask questions. I’m glad they’re telling them not to settle for a mediocre career, and they’re telling them that university doesn’t guarantee success.

Teaching is the most important job a person can have. Sadly, there are some teachers who doesn’t take their job seriously. I personally know of one who went into the profession because of the summer holidays, and not because she had any interest in the kids.

I’m glad my cousin has some teachers that are willing to mentor her. Maybe she’ll be able to avoid the quarter-life crisis that I currently find myself in.

Ask questions. Think about your future. Don’t settle.

Those are just a few of the things I wish they’d taught me.

*oink.

After spending my afternoon reading countless articles about the swine flu, I have one thing to say…

(more…)

Here’s something uplifting to think about whilst you sit in your cubicle:

Jennifer Aniston is richer than you.  By a lot.  In 2008, she made a reported $27 million.

That’s a 27, followed by 6 zeros.

Think about that for a minute.

$27 million divided by 365 days equals $73,972.60/day. Not bad for a woman who works MAYBE six months out of the year, hm? In 2006, the median yearly income for an unattached individual in Canada was $28,500.00.

Money buys freedom, right? It’d be nice to be able to stop working and live comfortably. It’d be nice to be able to take the time to figure out who you are as a person, discover your talents, and make new goals without the burden of debt.

If only, right?

These people – these Hollywood people – they exist on a completely different plane than us common folk.

I’m not a huge fan of her work but I don’t have anything negative to say about Ms. Aniston. She works for her money and she earns it in a leigitmate way, unlike all those corporate crooks out there.

It’s just hard to fathom that kind of money. Or that kind of success. Or the access that comes with being a multi-millionaire.

Sigh.

We’re all in the wrong business.

For a long time, my teeth didn’t line up quite right.

My left canine was a little higher than the rest and I’d spend hours in front of the mirror, staring at it. “There’s nothing wrong with your teeth,” my mother would say. “They look beautiful.” Of course she would say that. She’s my mother.

I eventually saved up enough money to get my teeth fixed and then I shelled out $350.00 to have them whitened but it didn’t stop there. It never stops. There is always something that needs to be fixed.

Teeth. Hair. Skin. Nails.

Intellect?

Yes, that too. But intellect always comes as an afterthought.

I spent my morning reading about the Gaza Strip but then I walked past a mirror and noticed my split ends and I made an appointment with my hairdresser. Seems like every time I have some extra cash I’m running somewhere, or to someone, asking to be fixed. And when I am fixed I am happy. Until I see a girl who is prettier than me.

The extra time and money never goes to worthwhile things. I only use it to fix things. The money never goes towards things that could make life better for me and for others.

I’d like to become move evolved. Perhaps one day I will.

Not today, though.