Landmarks For The Forgotten Aspirations.

 

The officious office know-it-all tries to disrupt the day with displays of his erudition. I've taken to coming in earlier and earlier merely to spend less active time around him. He and the office vaper speak song lyrics to one another and try to stump themselves. Something they manage to do with alarming regularity. Actually, the mere fact that they are doing it is alarming. The fact that it happens with increasing regularity is simply baffling.

I try to retain a cool detachment. I curse the person who invented open concept seating daily. I stay immersed in podcasts, but often the sounds of people trying to outsmart one another bleeds through. The insincere chuckles at other's comments, contrasted with the mannered giggling reserved for one's own bon mots. I have to surrender to Soundcloud who now think that whatever it is they offer it warrants paying extra for the absence of commercials.

An additional hazard comes with avoiding the eye contact from those hungry for approval. The best way to avoid having to pretend you found something someone said clever is to pretend you didn't hear it, or preferably, not actually hear it at all. In this sense, and in this sense only, does Soundcloud offer a service warranting a fee.

The arguments and disagreements are gratuitous in the extreme. Almost as though they are afraid of silence. And the eyes continue to linger towards me. Hungrily fishing for validation. 'Come on man! What I just said right there was so fucking brilliant it must have made your iPhone temporarily stop muffling everything I normally say out of sheer respect for how fucking amazingly brilliant what I just said was.'