This moment
The intimate fears and thoughts of a writer trapped behind a reception desk.
The amalgamation of the lobby sounds echo through my brain as I stare a blank word document in front of me. The growls of the AC above, the intermitted hissing of coffee grinder from the café across the way, accompanied by the hums and haws of the security guard’s cockney accents – the electronic female elevator voice repeats herself every five minutes ‘cart b’ ‘cart e’. The revolving entrance lightly squeaks signalling every time a new important person enters the building. What makes them so important you may wonder? Merely the fact that they enter through the front entrance is the very thing that differentiates this hierarchy. We may all work in the same building but there are many things that remind us that we are not the same. Even though my desk sits in front of the entrance only two meters away, I am not granted permission to enter through it when I arrive to work. No, I must walk around perimeter of the building all the way to the back of the loading bay – security kitchen crew receptionist agency workers alike, enduring the unspoken inconvenient but most importantly degrading difference between us and them.
Most days I look at the security on duty, standing for 30 minutes at a time in the empty lobby waiting for something to happen. I wonder what they are thinking about – whether the mundanity of their role has poisoned the vacancies of their mind. Are their thoughts dark? Are the dwelling with depth of how they regret not spending more time with their children whilst they were growing up? Or maybe their thoughts are as simple as rehashing yesterday’s match of the day.
The corporate crowd walk past during peak hours, we are instructed by contract to say good morning to all our clients in the building, but rarely do we get an acknowledgement back. We are no strangers to dealing with arrogant guests swooping with the opening statement ‘I AM HERE FOR A MEETING’ failing to state their name, whom they are here to see or simply having any manners in general to start the interaction with a simple hello how are you. No that would of course be far too fetched for these entitled corporate wankers.
I say I don’t care, I laugh at their stupidity, but I know deep inside me the uninteresting nature of this blend environment is shredding my soul slowly. I am tired every single day, from waking up at 6 am to sit at the front desk for 9 hours only to drag myself home eat dinner, watch an episode of reality tv and then to go to bed again just so I can get up at 6am to repeat it again all the next day.
I have a starkly bold belief that one day I will have a fulfilling creative role – enough to sustain a modest lifestyle in London where at least I don’t have to succumb to working in a soul crush role like the one I am currently in today. I must have this absolute delusional self-belief because if I didn’t, I would go completely and utterly insane. I must remind myself everyday that it is okay that I am here for now, it won’t be forever, something will have to give, the break where my writing will result in finical stability will come my way. I envision myself sat in a literature convention on a panel discussing my best selling novel giggling with the host about how just a year prior I was bouncing from one extreme to the next to pay my rent from assisting autistic children to sitting at front of house for a tobacco conglomerate. It’s these visions that keep me going quite frankly.
The life of a true writers is one of perseverance, resilience and patience. Nothing comes for free or without pure grit and determination. I fear sometimes that working in this environment is sterilising my creative mind. I on the one hand have amples off free time to create at the front desk but the impending pressure to deliver, to be creatively sound and productive almost stresses me out even more than when I couldn’t write during my day job. It the fear of wasting this valuable time but that very fear is what is holding me back from even trying in the first place.
To find the perfect balance where my energy is not consumed by the degrading nature of my job and the twats that I deal with on a daily basis, the stupid questions I have to answer - all of these things bother me and when I am bothered I am wasting time and energy on the negative when I could be creating.
Balance is the key to life and I am slowly figuring out a way to sustain effective consistency on my creative journey.