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I joined Blogger in 2004 with a tiny collection of writing before I even really knew what blogging meant. I guess that was before anyone knew what blogging meant. There are exactly 26 posts on my first blog, which I titled “Eyes and Ears Wide Open”. I made it private because I was afraid someone would read it. Ha! Silly, and hilarious when now I live so much of my life online for anyone in the world to see.
There are still a few things I keep to myself. Or at least I used to. I used to moderate comments on this blog. I’m not doing that any more. Any one who puts a comment on my blog will see it published immediately. [Mom, please refrain from any gushing in the comments section. Just send me an email telling me how awesome I am. :)] Another thing I used to do a lot of was poetry writing. I won some very tiny poetry contests when I was a teenager and in my early twenties. There are a few of my poems out there published in anthologies, though I don’t own a single copy of any of them. Most of what’s on my first blog is poetry, deeply personal narratives that I never intended for any other soul to read.
Until now. In this year of new beginnings, I’m working on an illustrated book of those poems and a few others I’m writing, sprinkled with my doodles on my new Wacom Bamboo, a drawing tablet that connects to my Mac. My brother-in-law is a genius with his drawing tablet; me – I’m purely an amateur. I thought in looking back at my first blog that I’d see so much progress, that I’d changed so much as a person. I actually laughed out loud when I saw how similar I am to my 27-year old self. Outwardly, my life may be very different. On the inside, I’m still the same gal, but now with more real confidence.
To give a flavor of just how similar I am, and just how out-of-whack some aspects of my life are with how I’d like them to be, here is a post from December 2004 about cubicles. Despite my distaste for them, I work in one. I’m part of the legion of cubicles dwellers that I promised myself 7 years ago that I’d never be again. Life makes me laugh, and then shake my head, and then get up and make some serious changes. By December 31, 2011, I’m bound and determined to finally live up to the promise I made in the post below many years ago.
Saturday, December 11, 2004
Cubicles
I will never understand the human desire to set up boundaries and divisions, to seal themselves off from one another. Why is it important for people to say, “I am this and you are that. I sit here and you sit there”? I hate the cubicle culture and I fear it’s growing at a furious pace. I am getting off the train here – no more cubicles for me. And when I’m running my own operations, I will refuse to have cubicles. I’m actually going to business school on a quest to get rid of cubicles. To make them as obsolete as slide rules.
I recently saw a photo of an office that didn’t have walls between desks, but had gigantic tropical fish tanks winding through the office. You can see the person on the other side of you. You can take a boat and send it “down tank” with a message for a colleague. If we must have boundaries, then can we at least make them transparent and filled with color and life?
The image above is the one that inspired my post back in 2004. Not as inspiring as I remember it. I would make my office fish tank much more colorful.
This blog is part of the 2011 WordPress Post Every Day Challenge.
Christa Avampato 