I’m typing as hard as I can, because I am good at my job. It’s not fast, but speed is not the issue. I don’t think it’s possible for someone to type harder. It’s loud - of that I can assure you, and it reflects my skill and ability as a knowledge worker. I lift my hands with each keystroke, as the muscles in my muscular hands are not enough to elicit the type of stroke this work needs.
I can tell that my seatmate understands the importance of my work and the criticality of this note; he is looking right at me with what I can only assume are piercing eyes holding awe and appreciation for seeing good work being done. I can’t tell for sure because I do not have time to make eye contact. Though he cannot see what I type, if he could, he would realize that he is indeed correct in his assessment. I am doing important work, and as such, am an important man. He must be impressed with the powerful exactness with which I strike the keys. Sequentially. One. By. O.N.E. And you, dear reader, should know that each capital was formed by individual depressions of the shift key. As one of the larger keys on the board, I was required to strike it with even more vigor - I’m sure you understand.
Yet, despite the awe my seat partner has for my work, I must not let that distract me. My mission, whose enaction I can hear cut brilliantly through the excessively loud music I have playing through earpods, is of the utmost importance. Indeed, the clacking of the keys, ringing out like applause, are ushering me to the end of this newly minted line of text, which will usher you, dear reader, to the meat of this work, which I will espouse promptly.
Dear reader! I regret to inform you that the meat you so honestly deserve, has spoilt, and that my work has been disrupted. I came to realize the last half hour of systematically and powerfully striking the keys had come to naught. Two paragraphs, meaty in their own right, had come to fruition upon the page. However, it came to pass that the two paragraphs repeated each other, one becoming a redundant copy of the last. Naturally, I sought to delete the repeated text, character by character, using the powerful and large (hence, loud) backspace bar, but became distracted by the grief of eliminating such lovingly crafted (and hammered-to-print) words. I was carried away, dear reader. The truth of the matter is that I am guilty of the total destruction of BOTH paragraphs (this time typed with the intermittent flicking on-and-off of the cap locks key between each letter, I really think you can feel the difference do you not, dear reader?), leaving but only the initial preface of my great work. Which is why this paragraph starts where you now see it, immediately apres the first. If only you could see the despair of my seat partner, whose eyes plead to me, “say it isn’t so!” But I regret to inform you, my compatriot, it is so.
To my displeasure and disdain, I will have to take my rest before resuming this critical work. For I now have a phone call wherein I must explain to my coworker, loudly, that I am on a train. A train wherein I expect them to reach me via email with “exactly what you just told me now, please”.
Until next time,
The man beside Adam on the train, travelling from Toronto to Ottawa.