Performatively Reading

The olive green keyboard sat at the edge of the table, slowly being pushed outwards by the ever growing pile of miscellaneous clutter. Books, loose pages and misplaced pens spilling out from an overturned ceramic mug. There was a tea flask to the left of the monitors, a fuzzy blur that provided a symbolic warmth to the cold, soft lit office.

The monitor had a commanding presence, keeping eyes transfixed on an active chat – something about a pipeline breakdown and potential delays. Response updating with a longer ETA on the technical fix, a growing sense of urgency for updates and the quiet reshuffling of deadlines being negotiated in the side chats. Images of work under strict NDAs flicker in fast succession. Eyes rapidly darting back and forth, over and over again.

A blink and the room felt warmer… brighter, even. There’s a yellow-orange hue in the peripherals, giving the vague blobs resembling bookshelves, doors and curtains a glow. An empty, faded pastel pink plate to the right of the monitors, placed precariously on top of an uneven placement of a needlessly thick “Python for Dummies” textbook. Crumbs littered the surface of the plate; from a failed attempt in air-frying chips that came out as a sad, pale, wrinkled pile of a starch blob that was all too wet and too dry in the mouth.

Over worked grinding of the mouse wheel scrolled to a much colder and darker room. The room’s lightswitch is somewhere, too far to reach from the chair. The monitors are even brighter, like brilliant white, now flickering slightly in a nauseating pattern that dries eyes out with ease. Looking to the bottom right corner of the screen, the clock read “6:00PM”, with a small dialogue box above it.

“Hey, can you do some overtime tonight?”