Blue boxes

After I wrote about how death is part of life, I came across an article about the decline of creativity in the advertising industry. Its writer was clearly extremely talented, both in his job as art director, and in his writing (although the punctuation was a little slapdash). Turns out most of his blog was about his slow death from cancer, of which he died a few months ago. His last entry was an obituary of Neil Armstrong. It wasn’t particularly exciting, but so very tragic, a dying man of 50 writing about the death of a man a generation older than him, and his memories of watching the moon landing as a boy.

I stayed up far too late reading it all, and then was so sad I couldn’t sleep. The next day at work was consequently dire, not helped by being 12 hours long. My task for the latter part of the day (I.e. from 5-9 after everyone had gone home) was to enter a weekly breakdown of test statistics into annoying little powder-blue boxes that wouldn’t format properly on a PowerPoint slide. First I had to complete a reclassification of the test coverage, because someone decided they wanted to view a breakdown by financial instruments traded, rather than by the departmental structure I had set up weeks ago. I suppose I should have completed the re-cut more quickly, and was dragging my heels partly because I think it’s a stupid idea.

I got home at 10, having stopped off at boots for a cheap tuna sandwich which I ate on the tube. My sister made me poached pears because she felt sorry for me, and I cried, pitying my poor life of following the money rather than my own interests. Seventeen years of working hard at school and a little less hard at university, eleven years of trying to fashion a career, and it all comes down to filling in blue boxes on a Monday night, staring frustratedly at the Natwest tower lit up outside my window. I’ve only myself to blame, and I am well aware that millions of people would love to have my problems, which makes me feel even worse for being an ungrateful fool.