The many late and obstinate evenings I've had in the office finally seem to have amounted to something. In a few months of time, I would have a different title and work out of a different building. I am not sure whether I would then lead a different life. I do not know what to expect and the degree to which my expectations matter.
On every workday for the past two years I have traveled to the building complex along Wolfratshauser Straße to the south of Pullach, and away from the same complex a wearier person. On the door tag of my office writes my name and beneath it, my title, and in it I drink plenty of coffee and fight soundless battles against the screen. In winter I could witness daily the changes of nights into dawns, and dusks into evenings. Nowadays the days are longer, and therefore I could see only the latter. In these two years I have won many battles that won't be understood by anyone outside of my floor. And the more battles I win, the more I am defined by them. Words like "bridge", "delta" and "basis" are becoming more and more tangible; and words like "love", "literature", "belief" less so. In books I have read about people looking forward to things in a train station, by the river, amidst a desert, on their way home from a joint dinner, or around the turn of the street - I have not read about people looking forward to things in their companies - yes through companies wages are received and lives are lived. But there no one seems to have any longing beside having a vacation, and no one uses the word longing. And therefore, I simply prepare the slides and talk about the rises and falls of KPIs through a Beamer attached to the ceiling - Net Sales is up, OP is down, Volume is up, Price is down, compared to the budget, and compared to the forecast.
There are moments in the office when, temporarily setting aside my projects and tired of drinking even more coffee, I turn my chair to the right, and only a sheet of glass separates me from the world outside. In those moments time feels static - the contours of the building on the opposite side, the monochrome of the sky, and the distant white dot created by the hidden sun form a sketch painting with abrupt and meaningless contrasts. In those moments I feel the need to miss something, or rather many things, the more recent of which I still remember vividly. I could see them, put them on pedestals, or imagine around them, but I couldn't ever touch them. Their glow coupled with the restrained white lights brimming through the clouds somehow makes the office dimmer than it actually is, and the aroma of the just-now steaming coffee blander.
I try to sit straight to see the things perhaps more clearly. But before long the loose rub of my woolly suit pants against the black fabric of the office chair slumps me back. I then turn my chair back to the left, jiggle the mouse and continue the work. In the office there are urges for me to discard these short moments of musings readily, urges for me to make some progress and progress. For me, these urges are hard to ignore, not because they are more tenable or rational than the others, but because increasingly I do not know of what lies beyond them. What is an assistant bookkeeper without his book, a pharmacist without his pharmacy, and an office clerk without his office? In the face of these types of questions I have grown routinely timid, yet no amount of my inquiry has thus far produced a comforting answer.
Instead, I type on the keyboard piecemeal the thousandth line of code for an FX effect calculation, and slam loudly "Enter" at the last line break before the report runs through.
