Perspective

Today begins my fourth week in our new building (although only my 13th day working). It's given me a very different perspective on many things (in addition to those provided by my recent break up). Here's a picture I took the Friday before my day 1 from my window.

Since I moved closer to work back at the beginning of 2007, my daily world got much smaller. Work and boyfriend went from being 12+ miles to 1.7 and 2.6 miles away, respectively. I no longer saw downtown on a regular basis, so I'm glad to have that back with the new building.

The other perspective the new building offers is the cubicle environment. My department is used to offices, even if the doors and/or walls are sometimes made of glass. Space was at a premium in our old building, so I never had my own office with this department, but I was in a space where the door could be closed when needed.

One of my coworkers quoted another coworker as saying our new building offers isolation without privacy. It's really weird. Sometimes it feels like a ghost town, you hardly see anyone around, much less so than with the old building, but you can hear them--usually on the phone but I had to ask one of our student workers to turn down his headphones the other day.

And, while my cube is not small or cramped, it does lack a sense of coziness. It seems somehow sterile and cold. The one plant I inherited from my old office mate has already succumb to the new environment. It looked green and fine, but it had gotten totally dried out, maybe even the first weekend it was in the building since the cooling system wasn't on and I heard from those setting up our computers that it had gotten into the 90's in the building (and Daniel had put it by the window and I forgot to water it).

Writing this, it seems that the outer world has gotten closer but my coworkers have gotten farther away, even though many of us are in the same building for the first time ever. The new culture needs work, and hopefully my department's Community Building Committee (which I am a member of) can help.