the cool

Late afternoon. I’m hanging with the cool guys.





Well, okay, cool guys plus Ed who under no circumstance can be characterized as such.

We’re looking at the lauded building designed by architect Douglas Kozel. (Kozel is with us, walking us through the stunning structure.)






It’s a mission with a purpose. Not my purpose, but sort of kind of Ed’s. His business is growing and the players need space and someone's got to build it. Might they create a place built along the lines of this? And if not, couldn't one pick bits and pieces and incorporate them into a final vision of what is to be?

So we look at bits and pieces.






I think how being a state employee for nearly all of my professional life has kept me away from decisions about how my workspace should look. My own office is pathetically small, cramped, basic. I purchased the chair in which I sit twenty years ago at a discount store. I believe it was under $50. The best part of the space is the window. (It is a grand window, looking out on Bascom Mall.)

I like great work spaces, great living spaces too. Even as for me, there’s beauty now in the uncomplicated. The farmhouse is one such place.

Still, I am tantalized. At the point where we examine the superbly designed employee snack space, I almost ask – may I please submit my resume to work here?

Then I think how after snack, there’s the desk with a work project before it.

If I can have only one, I prefer loving the work project.

But man oh man, it's beautiful to imagine that one can have it all!

Maybe not. Too much pressure. One has to confront something in the everyday that is imperfect. Otherwise, it's not life. It's fantasy.