High Above the Subway Sub-Shop

Subtitle: Right Association

The ferrets of melancholy are at their most wistful on wintr’y days such as this.  It is best to distract them with activities lest their sighing lead to sulking or even, dare I suggest, brooding.

The title of this post refers to my first place of employment in the market research field. From the office on any given January morning, looking out of the second story window that faced the snow-slush gray Bank One building across the narrow avenue, you could see well-bundled pedestrians attempting to navigate the chaotic and partially concealed ice patterns on the sidewalks.  Snowplows could be heard scraping the asphalt, when they bothered to come out.  And the smell of fresh-baked bread, radiating through the air vents from the Subway ovens downstairs, filled the office with that distinct Subway fragrance…and cravings for a Cold Cut Combo, usually around 11 am.

Of course no one would mistake those for the Halcyon Days.  Not then and not even now, as time and memory conspire to smooth out the rougher patches.  The money was decent for a college student, not so much for a graduate.  The bitter yet fading recession of the early 90s was still very much top-of-mind, so few of the employees were embracing a full-on laissez les bon temps rouler mentality.  But we worked hard and, as I look back on it, the camaraderie made the time pass far more pleasantly than anyone of us could or should have expected. 

Perhaps with coworkers, as Tim Canterbury once opined, “all you’ve got in common is the fact that you walk around on the same bit of carpet for eight hours a day.”  That said, it was a form of community – sharing not just physical proximity or the same business name on our paychecks – but a gathering of people who, for a time, enjoyed the company we kept when we found ourselves at that place on Evergreen.

Recognizing the Heraclitus quote, “no one walks in the same river twice,” I still use that experience as the gold-standard for collegiality.  Should I find myself back in a traditional office environment in Corporate America, I would count myself fortunate to find coworkers like those again.  Treading diligently alongside thoughtful, hard-working, purpose-filled and respectful coworkers, on our shared carpet, is a thought that warms the heart. Even on a frosty day such as this.

Stay tuned, as more will follow.

No Rain

Every so often, a person may find himself or herself at the center of a special kind of nexus in the space-time continuum.  A place combined with a span of time, sometimes measured in weeks, months or perhaps even a couple of years, where the chasm that exists between Potential and Fulfilled Promise is narrowed. 

One such nexus, for me, came into being at Spartan Village Apartments in the City of East Lansing, Michigan in 1993.  Blind Melon was crushing the charts and I (reluctantly) retired my Girbauds from the jeans rotation.  After a brief interregnum from undergraduate studies (a hiatus brought about at the request of my now alma mater), I returned with a renewed Focus.  Although I was holding down a job that would turn out to be the launching pad for my career, I was hitting the books consistently…earning High Honors.  I was living with my then-girlfriend, soon-to-be fiancée (later my wife and now ex-wife).  I wasn’t rich, very far from it, and I may have been sowing dragon’s teeth in my personal relationship…but life seemed easy.

I left that nexus perhaps in 1995, definitely no later than 1996.

It is said that you can never walk in the same river twice.  I think that was my problem for a while.  In the late ‘90s and early ‘00s, I kept trying to herd the same water molecules back to the same spot.  Even though I had moved to Northern Virginia and started dealing with an array of Adult challenges, I kept trying to re-enter or otherwise re-create that nexus.  If I could just go back, life could be easier again.  I was grasping and, quite frankly, floundering.  I was fighting change and it was a losing rearguard action.

Had I been willing to see the World as It Is (as opposed to Was), had I been willing to accept the changes in my life, perhaps I could have avoided a not-inconsiderable amount of the unnecessary anguish and heart-ache that occupied several years of my existence.

I don’t mean to sound fatalistic…I believe there is such a thing as free will and that we can work hard to try to forge a certain existence, to create a life as we want it to be.  Simultaneously, we need to accept that others in our life have their own goals, aspirations, desires, needs and fears…and that these can change too.  Moreover, sometimes Events intervene over which we have little or no control.  Health issues, job downturns and the like. 

Perhaps it requires an exercise in mindfulness… knowing when one has left the nexus, and having the wisdom and courage to accept that…and Move On to the Next.    Time, at least how we humans perceive it, rolls forward and we are swept along with it. 

Even Places are not immune to change.  I was reminded of this reality when I came across the following post the other day:

“The buildings have exceeded their life expectancy and have become very expensive to maintain and repair. While the buildings that are currently occupied remain safe for the time being, in order for us to continue to deliver outstanding Spartan experiences to our residents, we have determined that Spartan Village Apartments will close in 2017. “

Stay tuned, as more will follow.