One of Those Days

I needed to stretch. I had been entering meaningless numbers in a gigantic spreadsheet and my body was entering rigor mortis. Putting my hands behind my head I leaned back in my desk chair and stretched every vertebra that would move. I caught sight, I thought, of the window behind me. Huh, I thought, as I am apt to do, I wonder if I can stretch far enough to see outside the window. I almost flipped my desk chair leaning back to see the window upside down. Hurling my body forward, as fast as I could, I went into uproarious laughter all by myself. What in the world possessed me to even think of such a thing, much less attempt it is beyond me. A moment of total silliness for which I was rewarded with an ever so grand laugh.

Continuing with the spreadsheet, my feet were tapping to the music of the CD player. The song was quite perky. What do you do when you’re enjoying a perky song? You turn it up. No brainer. So I did. I do a lot of work at home and often bop around to music as I work. Key word – working. Suddenly my brain engaged and I realized I was working that is, at work not home. I almost broke my arm trying to turn the CD player down. I sat there, looking in the hallway wondering who either (a) heard the music – who couldn’t and (b) who saw me? I immediately got tickled and had another splendid laugh.

The spreadsheet I was working on is one of those sacred cows every job has. It must be done. It must be done this way and only this way. A hundred years will pass by and they’ll still be doing that spreadsheet in that font, color, style, format, calculations – nothing, nothing will change. Until ….. today. The last number was entered on row 15,000+. I looked at the sheets of paper that contained the same information I had keyed into the spreadsheet. Ever the rebel, I changed the color of the font to blue instead of black and made it bold. I saved the spreadsheet and sent it off to the gods who had created it and decreed its sacredness. I then turned my desk chair to the side and faced my phone. I was like a child on Christmas Eve waiting for Santa. I just knew it had to ring. It did not. My act of rebellion had gone unnoticed. But then, no one ever read that spreadsheet anyway.

Some days, life overpowers and overflows with such richness and texture that lives are changed, miracles occur and history is rewritten. Other days, well, you just have to lean back in your chair and see if you can see a window upside down without falling on your head. Or maybe, crank the music up a bit and let the music make work not work. One day, I have no clue how long it will take, but another little spreadsheet worker will be keying away on the sacred spreadsheet. She or he will go to enter the last number and the number they key will pop out blue and bold. I wonder if they will notice. If they do, I hope they have a magnificent laugh. Maybe, just maybe, they’ll change the blue to green. Ah, one can hope.