Trapped in the G Suite
Photo by @sincerelymedia on Unsplash
I’m trapped in the G-Suite and I keep bumping around into walls and kitchen tables looking for an exit, like a Sim who’s glitching out.
I wake up and check my email. I know where I’m going and what I’m doing and when because Google calendar buzzes and tells me so. When I have a blank day in the G-cal, I look around aimlessly wondering what I should be doing.
When did this happen? College?? When did I put my brain on ice and assign someone else, a color-coded robot, to lead the charge?
I am extremely susceptible to organization. I love it. In elementary school (and middle and high school), I had a single-colored folder and notebook pair for each subject: Purple for English, green for math, yellow for science.
I know where my favorite pen is at all times because I leave it in the same notebook that sits on the same shelf every day and every night.
If you ask me where anything is in my house, from the red pancake spatula to the snowflake-patterned headband I wear skiing, I can tell you (and I will tell you, because I have no secrets and also I want to impress you).
What I want to know is, are there still people out there who just…wake up and do a day without checking their progress?
I have the stupid exercise and standing-up rings on my Apple watch and am in various themed step-count competitions with my coworkers to win the privilege of being entered to (not) win a giftcard to Buffalo Wild Wings by imaginatively walking to Mozambique or Paris or through Laguardia at 5:00 PM on a Sunday or straight to the Earth’s core, for funsies.
My brain has learned that “badges” from these various made-up accomplishments I earn from walking the dog around the block just a little further than either of us want to go and getting up once an hour while at work to walk to the printer or the bathroom or out to the parking lot to scream in my car, should be my primary focus and motivation.
It’s nice to have reminders, but my brain never forgets, so the reminders and the badges serve only as a carrot at the end of a stick I am already holding.
I just did an extended break from Instagram to clear the digital clutter, and it helped my brain a noticeable bit, but not enough. I want to be like one of those people who uses a tear-off countertop paper calendar that tells them a silly little joke each day or even better, a fun fact, but does not ping them all day long to remind them of the things they wrote down to do.
Or, like someone who has the patience to make pasta by hand and has the recipe memorized.
I want to be like the guy who can imitate bird noises so well that the morning doves on my roof look back and forth to each other in a mix of shock and admiration.
I want to wake up and drink my coffee slowly without thinking, “This is nice. I’m just sitting here drinking my coffee and soaking it all in…Okay, five more minutes, then I’m gonna get up and start a load of laundry and make a grocery list and call grandma, it’s been awhile.”
I regularly want to throw my phone in a lake, but I also still want to be able to Google, “Is lake algae good for your hair?” and “Do bullfrogs shut up if you yell at them?”
My relationship status with all things tech, it seems, remains #itscomplicated.
Maybe I won’t always be stuck.
Maybe I won’t need to have Google Maps pulled up when I go to the library, not because I don’t know how to get there, but because I don’t want to be so into the podcast I have on that I miss my turn.
Maybe one day I’ll retire to a cabin in the woods and have a dog named Wifi instead of the actual thing.
Maybe one day, but not today.
Yours Conflicted in Convenience,
Emily Rose // Miss Magnolia
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