Wednesday, February 23, 2005

The real world
I spent the evening shift at work filing. Papers. You know, that’s the stuff they knock down trees to make. The stuff that has been rendered unnecessary by… erm… computers.

Not at my place of employment. Oh yes, we still have paper in the public sector in this corner of the Middle East, and plenty of it. Maybe I should say even in this corner of the Middle East, seeing as how we're regarded as this amazing hi-tech empire. Of course, that's in the private sector. The public sector is chronically understaffed and under funded, so sadly we're probably the last ones in the world to enjoy Israel's technological advancement.

There is something so Sisyphean about filing. It never ends. And it bores me so much, I put it off and put it off until it gets so out of hand, I'm like that little girl in that fairy tale who forgot how to tell the little pot to stop making porridge. It takes over. It gets scary. It pours out into the corridor and out into the street. And the more I put it off, the harder it is to do it when I finally get round to it.

To ease my procrastination I have deviously developed a simple but ingenious system of filing in two stages. This creates a situation whereby every piece of paper is easily located if needed, even if it is yet un-filed (properly filed that is), and the real filing (I have to do it in the end) is far less tedious. I'm quite proud of my little system.

What a pity I'm going to be replaced by a computer in the foreseeable future.