It’s moving day at Creative Dimensions. Although all of us are setting forth with the promise of greener pastures, I can’t help but wax a bit sentimental about the sterile little office I leave behind.
The furniture in my 12×12 workspace looks like office furniture anywhere in America, as does the phone, artwork, blinds and walls. But, as when leaving the high school you took for granted for three years and waved to from the street for the last time, you realize that its particular clang of lockers and that indelible custodian smell of its bathrooms are gone forever—as is all the pop-quiz angst you sweated into the floors and that black splotch on the lab counter where your Bunsen burner blew up.
So, what am I leaving behind? (I have to laugh at the irony of the phrasing.) There, in the chair which has looked so clone-like all this time, are two divots that, like a fingerprint, mark my time in this place. Will another institutional-gray-fabric-covered-piece-of-foam ever embrace me the same way?
I cast a wistful glance to the corner where the front and left walls meet. A “V” of shadow points down to a spot at which I’ve stared for countless hours thinking about brands, promos and websites. I can’t shake the feeling that residual ideas linger there and will haunt the next occupant as did the two little girls in that hotel where Jack Nicholson went crazy in “The Shining.”
There are two guest chairs that have stared at me unblinking for two years, a painting in pastel colors of a flowerish thing I’ll forget in the next few seconds, and the desk that I’d like to think was faithful, but I know will throw its drawers open for the next John to come along.
Well, toodle-loo, old chum. Don’t cry for me. You’re an office.
–John Graham, Copy Director @ Creative Dimensions