cubicle rot

One of the things I've learned through the past few years of reading online journals is that it's a bad idea to talk about work on your blog.

But I figure that the vast majority of people at my company don't read this blog, so I'm free to talk about it openly. Right?

Really, this post isn't so much about my job itself as about the way that a 9-to-5 job can slowly kill your imagination.

I'm looking for advice here. I'd like to hear about how other "cubicle dwellers" manage to hang on to their sanity and their imagination in the workplace. This isn't an issue that I'm going to "solve" today, of course, but it's an area where I would really appreciate some fresh perspective.

So far in my career, my work as a graphic designer has presented a constant tension between two poles: interesting, challenging projects that paid poorly (or not at all), and "fat cat" projects that paid the bills. When I took this design job with the Very Large Multinational Corporation last year, it was a smart financial move. After a couple of bumpy years, I was delighted to have a job with bona fide health care, a 401(k), and a salary that would let me save a little.

But as with so many scenarios, there was a snake hiding in the garden. In this case, the snake was called Soul-Eating Boredom.

I could do this job in my sleep.

One of the issues with working at a giant corporation, of course, is that you are generally rewarded by honoring the many restraints the company puts on you. In a way, you're getting paid to be bored. You fill out your Periodic Self-Evaluation Forms (PSEFs) with rigorous care. You contribute to the annual United Way campaign with a smile. You learn what all the acronyms mean, and you use them correctly in sentences. Mediocrity is applauded. (So much that I sometimes find it crushing.)

All those limits that I carefully honor from 9-to-5 have started to leach into my 5-t0-9 life.

It makes me want to run away and join the circus. It makes me want to get a job driving a bus or planting trees or working as a trashy waitress at a trashy diner. (The dream of working at a trashy diner has been with me for years. Years!)

This is a hard place to acknowledge. I think I thought that by this point in my career, I'd be past the place where I felt like chucking everything in the nearest dumpster.

So. How would I start over? What is that work that I'm seeking? What is the job that will prevent me from losing that quiet little spark of creativity and imagination? Am I expecting too much from work? Maybe when you work in an office, a certain element of office rot is just to be expected.... right?

I don't know. Who ever knew that the thought of serving hash browns to deadbeats would one day sound kind of invigorating?