WFMAD: Blinded by my desk

Amazing author and extraordinary speaker Laurie Halse Anderson has challenged her readers to write 15 minutes a day for the entirety of August. Not sure if I'll actually accomplish it, but I intend to try, and post the results here.



In a world where having a work space near a window is a sought after thing, a status symbol, I find it slightly ironic that I have to keep the blinds closed most of the time to be able to see my computer screen. I was assigned this seat next to the tall windows as a marker of my status in the department (window worthy, but not large cubicle worth or office worthy). Being able to look outside while I am ruminating on a particular problem or theorizing why it is that Elmo needs to find more songs to sing is certainly a nice perk. 


The downside of working in New York City, however, is that you are often surrounded by buildings made of glass. And if you are lucky enough to be free from glass towers, you are probably surrounded by apartment buildings with a multitude of windows that are just as reflective. Reflecting the sun into those tall, tall windows of which I have the privilege of being near. Reflecting the sun right onto my bright white desk which, while certainly solid, does an amazing job acting as a mirror to direct the sun back into my eyes. And that white desk, while looking clean and sleek when we first arrived in our new offices, but looking much shabbier now that it is covered in coffee rings and streaks of nail polish that has rubbed off my nails as I sort paper, still manages to have enough clean surface to reflect enough sun to effectively blind me.

So, after all the pomp and circumstance of achieving this desk position, this window-adjacent work area, this status-symbol-cubicle, I must stand on top of that nice white desk, grip the bottom of the nice white blinds, and pull them down to cover the entirety of those tall, tall windows. There goes the sun, there goes the view, here comes my ability to see my computer.

If this isn’t a first world problem (a NYC-centric problem) then I don’t know what is.