I am a drone in an invisible sea of drones. I’m perfectly happy being invisible and getting my work done and being left alone to do it. Evidently I do something right because people come to me and ask me how to do xyz or abc. I find that pretty flattering, but also a little disconcerting, because I’ve tried to not let anyone know I know anything.
What I have made abundantly clear is I have a life on the outside. Kinda sounds like prison, sorta… But, my point is I’m the office do-gooder, cheerleader, and work-life balancer. I’ve encouraged people to work on Rebuilding Together, to walk with us for a cure and most recently I got us an inner-office art show. It is this, that I am most proud.
It began a year ago when we moved into a new space. Bare walls begging for art. And they go to posters .com to fill the walls!! WTF?! We have however many floors of worker bees and without hesitation I could name half a dozen co-worker artists whose work should grace that space.
We have an annual survey of stupid shit like are there enough beatings, is moral low enough, should the beatings increase, and how can we possibly make your time here suck more? After we complete the survey, uppers review our “anonymous” answers and we have a meeting to discuss what we are going to do to improve this. After the posters incident, I said in a meeting, I wanted to see an exhibit of our collective creativity. It has taken a year, a few “surveys of interest” and a couple of presentations to make this happen. The little mouse’s voice was finally heard.
While our artist participation wasn’t great in numbers (I’m sure that had nothing to do with the fact we got this together in 2 weeks after a year of feet dragging), it was great in creativity and enthusiasm. We had someone bring in fimo beads with faces and flowers, a cast bronze bowl, gorgeous photos, lots of drawings, a dream catcher repurposed from a tomato cage (brilliant!), poems, a glass mosaic, and a rag rug made from old mis-matched socks. I am like a proud parent that we got this off the ground and that an office overflowing with apathy and indifference gave this the slightest nod.
I’ve had several people come by my desk and tell me how good everything is and how happy they are folks brought stuff in. I guess the invisible shield is coming down. I suppose it’s ok when I’m known for working to live and not living to work.
Lula Harp 
Thanks, Lula! This has been a lot of fun and I hope next year more people will take advantage of the opportunity to share with our co-workers.
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Next year we will start squeaking our wheel a little earlier. Now that we have this success to show, I’m sure next year will be bigger. Thanks for all your efforts in making this happen.
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That’s awesome that you put this together. Way to go!
Why the hell does every good idea need to go thru some dumbass feasibility study, then a survey, and thru legal to happen these days? if we had gone through crap like this eons ago we’d probably still be wondering if the wheel would be a good idea. God forbid we follow our dreams!
I really shouldn’t split a bottle of merlot with the mr. and then read blogs. 🙂
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I even had to create a waiver that everyone had to sign and display with their work assuming all responsibility and that the bosses and building would not be held responsible should something get broken or stolen. Thank goodness there were no committees when they made the wheel.
And I think you need to have more wine!
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