Career Moves
Dear Boss:
First off, I want to say sorry about the plant. I mean, like, really sorry.
Is "Dear Boss" overstepping things? I would go back and fix that, but my program tells me that I need to always be thinking forward, not backwards. So "Dear Boss," it is. Maybe that'll help ease some of the tension between us. You know, the tension that started around the time of the Jenssen Brothers project.
At any rate, I'm terrifically sorry about the events of last night. This is not, my program takes care to note, a stepping back to the past for the sake of trying to correct it, it is, let me quote the manual, "a method of healing the present. Through an anecdotal reference to a past event which is made immediate by referencing it here in the present." I get a little mixed up with the tenses to use and what time, exactly, I'm talking about when I'm trying to live by the program. Which may be what happened during the Jenssen Brothers project. You see, I'd just started the program, and had been reading all this literature, and it was a little like that Metaphysics 201 Philosophy course I took in college, and I didn't know which ideas were obtuse and which were valid metaphysical points for discussion. The entire week we'd intended to launch I had been arguing with my mentor in the program about the semantics of talking about a certain past event of which I was ashamed and when it counted as living life in the past and when it was "healing it in the present."
Yes, there was the incident with your daughter, as well, about that time. But that one I will well and truly leave in the past. Because I'm living life forwards, only. Now.
Okay, so the plant. Things got out of hand last night, and the plant suffered, as a result. I know that it was the plant given to you on your fiftieth birthday that originally you had complained about to me (before the Jenssen Brothers project, back when you still confided in me, occasionally). And I know that, despite your original complaints you saw it flourish under your hand, and you started using that as all sorts of metaphor and simile for aspects of projects and work-life balance and personal growth. It bugged a lot of people, and endeared you to others, but that, too, is looking to the past, and I will not say, one way or the other, into which camp I fell.
I was standing on a desk, and yes, I'd imbibed a few drinks. Yes, it was your desk. Yes, I am also the one who caused the blizzard of papers to fall all around your office. I would check behind the couch, if you can't find any particular ones. My performance review, for example. I'll level with you here, mate, I feel as if, at this stage in the letter, I've earned that special mate-like bond with you once again, I may have put the performance evaluation there myself, without the help of my sock feet and your shockingly slippery desk surface. You'd think your feet would stick a bit better, with the blotter and paperweights on there, wouldn't you?
And so, in my descent from your desktop to the floor I happened to fling myself couch-ward, to attempt to save myself from grievous bodily harm, only to bang off the arm of the couch and down into the side table, which had held the aforementioned plant. I'll note that I failed to save myself from grievous bodily harm in this process, bruising a rib (I have a doctor's note to that effect) and embedding a piece of the clay pot that formerly housed the plant in my elbow (don't worry, this has since been removed).
I am sorry, as I've said, about the plant. And the state of your office. Even about the Jenssen Brothers thing. I would blame the program, but it says that I should not assign blame any longer, as blame only makes and ass out of 'u' and 'me'. I'm nearly certain they got that particular aphorism wrong, but I haven't told anyone in the program hierarchy just yet.
I am also sorry to note that, due to my calendar snafu, in which I thought yesterday was today, I will not be attending the company Christmas party at the office this evening. Give my regrets to the staff (this is only a superficial regrets, as, again, the program insists the regrets are something to be left behind, and not brought into our forward living lives), and I hope to see you Monday.
Your truly,
Bill "the Thrill"
disclaimer:
No Barry Manilow this week, thankfully.
Just me, you, a typewriter, and this empty Internet tube.
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