Make Wind

After dinner, John and John Jr. sat out on the deck enjoying a cocktail.

“Great of you to come over, son,” John said. “Your mother really appreciates it. I think she was worried. You know, with your new job and all, she thought you’d be too busy to see us anymore!”

John Jr. laughed. “Honestly, it’s easier to make time with a set nine-to-five schedule. There are things I miss about working at the grocery store. Being on my feet, for example. But I really do enjoy the regularity of office work. Not to mention the money, the benefits, all that. And it feels good to use my degree a bit, for sure.”

“That’s great to hear,” John said.

“But I just have to ask you, dad,” John Jr. said, “what do you do when it starts to feel a bit… stagnant?”

John sighed and took a long drink. “Well, I have to say, I’d hoped to have this conversation a bit further along in your career. But I guess it happens when it happens. How do you fight that stagnant feeling? That’s what you want to know? To put it simply, son: delusion. That’s how. You have to delude yourself into thinking that your work is what you do for a living but not your whole life. You tell yourself that something else is your true passion. You say, ‘I’m going to write that screenplay I’ve always had an idea for, a murder mystery set in 18th-century Budapest.’ Only, it turns out your excitement revolves less around doing than accruing. You buy books on screenwriting, books on Budapest. You rent films, get memberships to museums, plan vacations. But the pages remain forever blank. You’re just in a protracted preparation phase, you tell yourself. No start is better than a false start that sets you back even further. Eventually, you get married, you have kids, et cetera. You fall into a routine and things grow stagnant, as you say, but you keep telling yourself: you haven’t settled; any day now, inspiration will strike. You’re going to sit down at your computer and the words will flow out of you, even though you haven’t jotted down a single note in decades, and you have no ideas for the plot beyond it being a murder mystery. Eventually, you get to the point where you’re closer to retirement age than you are from your first day at the office. Then, you re-calibrate. Again, you’re not settling. You’re just waiting until you finally have the time. And when it arrives–when you finally do retire–you’ll find another excuse to put things off again. All to avoid the truth: that you’re just another office drone, bumping blindly through a maze of cubicles and paperwork, building a life around following certain procedures and avoiding the pink slip.”

John Jr. squinted into the distance for a moment before speaking again. “I meant the airflow, dad. Like, what do you do when the air in the office starts to get stagnant? My desk isn’t near a window.”

“Oh,” said John. “I see. Well, I’ve got a desktop fan. I can plug it into the wall or into a USB port for power. And it’s tall and slender, so it doesn’t take up much room. I think they’re selling one today on Meh. You should take a look.”

“Okay,” said John Jr. “I will.” He finished the last gulp of his cocktail and stood up. “I’m going to go inside and see if mom needs any help cleaning up.”

“Sounds good, son,” said John.