Blithe spirit

Uniberp reports from the Midwest:

I am leaving the company I work for at the end of the year, and in the intervening time I am trying to keep good relations there.

It is a somewhat absurd and flattering situation, where I am required to scan in through the door 3 days a week, but have no real duties. 

I can't help myself, though. I listen to a 10am daily meeting, but when it turns into a technical soapbox with various managers simultaneously skirting blame and taking credit for getting through the day's snafus, I feel the urge to tweak them and speak up. Yesterday I interrupted and asked them to confirm that the problem was "Issue A", and when confirmed, I cautioned them not to conflate  that with "Issue B"  although I did not use the word conflate because none of them know what that means. It cleared up the conversation and the next steps were settled in the next 2 sentences by my 2 compadre techs who are generally too timid or jaded to speak up in these bureaucratic feedlots.

The VP does not like to hear me speak since I announced I was leaving. My butting into a conversation with clarity confounds his efficiency model.

It was a really good tweak.

It's a miserable environment, with regular large layoffs, and people admittedly scared for their jobs. The cube farm appears to me most similar to an egg farm, with all the chickens in their cages straining their buttholes to produce an egg for the master so they don't go into the stew. Or maybe that's just me feeling superior. So I find a far flung conference room in the giant and 80% empty modern suburban office building on campus. I should try another building, although the scan report may show an anomaly. I don't know why I care about that. It must be habit. 

To make my drive to the office worthwhile I consolidate my errands, and 2 days a week for the past couple weeks I've gone to Lee Middle School at 12:45 to 'help' Rosanne with the 5th and 6th period art classes. It is the most engaging thing I've done in years, basically just sitting with 7th-8th graders doing clay ceramics projects. My mere hulking presence seems to exert a calming effect on a sometimes disruptive group of brats. I hope to be going there regularly. It is an unbelievable contrast to the chicken coop. The time flies at school, whereas at the office it's just grim death.

I get to work with clay and follow quite clear and supportive instructions from the teacher. Again, a massive contrast.

It could all be a delusion, that enjoying myself like this is just a downward spiral into ... what? Like I haven't been there several times before.

blithe: adjective

showing a casual and cheerful indifference considered to be callous or improper.

(I never knew is had a "callous" denotation. I've been called that, but I hope we are generally known as polite.)