“Don’t Take it Personally”

Dawn has yet to break as I pedal my bike over a road strewn with golden and rust-colored leaves. My front light blinks intermittently and with each brief flash, I glimpse the world around me, only to have it fade again. It’s just enough to see the occasional pothole or shard of glass. A pile of glass or a major crevice in the road potentially lie ahead, in the darkness, and remain unseen until it could be too late.

What a nice metaphor, I think, for our ability to predict the future. Maybe we can get a brief glimpse at some potential danger in the immediate vicinity. But we cannot see the disaster that awaits far off in the dark. Our bike gets nearer, but the great crash remains hidden. And then when it arrives, it wallops.

On another note, I’m thinking of “knowledge work”, which is my way of describing the modern computer-based job, and what it seems to be doing to the human mind. A part of me longs for the days when I could share a space, an office, or a lunch with friends, and feel a sense of collaboration… when purpose was derived more from care than from the mundane tasks at hand. Virtual collaboration is colder. Interactions are impersonal. Any sense of belonging is manufactured.

The knowledge worker is now beholden to the God that is Microsoft Teams, which dictates when your dialogue can begin and end, what you can and can’t see, and what you can and can’t hear. The SOP is the new bible. Forgetting to turn off mute is the new cardinal sin.

“Don’t take work personally,” they say. What an odd contradiction virtual work is. Human relations are less personal, yet work is taken more personally. People seem more on edge, more anxious, and angrier. It is both my perception and the result of every study done on post-Pandemic work stress. People lack sleep and movement. Aggression heightens and the cynic in me thinks we all need to just throw our PCs out the damn window and be done with it.

I shouldn’t take it personally.