Dear...Me

There are moments in the workday during which I am truly productive and industrious. There are other times, however, when I merely need to appear productive and industrious. In those moments, I write me-mail. Me-mail are letters I write to myself when people are floating in and out of my office, or when I fear the screen of my dutiful laptop may be in view of a higher-up. Me-mail might be an absurd letter to an Italian Generallissimo or to a bug. It might be me just stringing words together to see which truly don't belong in the same sentences. It's remarkably liberating, creatively, and better still, it gives the impression that I am furiously dashing off a work-realted missive thanks to the magic of Microsoft Outlook.

Here is one such me-mail:

Wouldn’t you just know I’d be sitting here, playing out the suburban fantasy one more time…I hear the whirring and the chugging of the espresso machine in the background, mechanically ejecting hot steam into a waiting milk tin. Layered above that are the tones of an obscure jazz vocalist, one whose anonymity is enough to generate intrigue and possibly in-store album sales. Her music, if purchased at all, will be done so not for her talent, but for her obscurity. I pity the poor bastard who engages in this sort of goose chase and the afternoons they must spend in front of their cd wall wondering aloud, “Who the hell ARE these people?”