Christmas in the Cubicle

Of course the last week before the university shuts down for Christmas, it's a little hard to get work done. You think about the errands to the post office or UPS that you have to run at lunch. Table space gets covered with irresistable sugary treats that everyone has to sample and analyze. One thing that helped me stay in cubicle and on task this past week, however, was some beautiful, relaxing, jazzy Christmas music by Dave Brubeck. "A Dave Brubeck Christmas" on Telarc Jazz contains the following cuts:

1. 'Homecoming' Jingle Bells
2. Santa Claus Is Coming To Town
3. Joy To The World
4. Away In A Manger
5. Winter Wonderland
6. O Little Town Of Bethlehem
7. What Child Is This? (Greensleeves)
8. To Us Is Given
9. O Tannenbaum
10. Silent Night Listen
11. Cantos Para Pedir Las Posadas
12. Run, Run, Run To Bethlehem
13. 'Farewell' Jingle Bells
14. The Christmas Song

The album, filled with standards, doesn't present them innovatively but does offer sincere, even simple, renditions of your favorite tunes. I've heard most of these songs way too often, and certain versions of them can send me running from the shopping mall, but Brubeck does them in a homey, delightful way that makes you feel like you're sitting around the tree with your family.

This album got me through the pre-Christmas work week and let me enjoy Christmas at work more than I have in a while. If you still need to buy a Christmas gift, download this from iTunes and burn everyone a CD. They'll love you - and, like I did last summer, may even bring it out in July to give it a listen.

Snow day

I've been at Bradley almost eight years and yesterday was the first time I remember classes being cancelled due to severe weather. What a rare pleasure to get up, drink a cup of coffee, and realize that I did not have to go out in this mess. I knew I wouldn't be able to get the car out of the driveway until we get it plowed and I did not relish walking through waist-high snow drifts to get to my office.

As the sun came out yesterday, however, I did think about walking to campus to take some pictures. And then I remembered the webcam (which I recently wrote about on a new blog at Bradley, titled Lydia's View). This latest webcam surpasses our old one in quality - instead of capturing an image every few seconds, it provides a live stream. You can see snowdrops coming down, the flag waving, and people walking past, all in real time. I captured this image from the cam yesterday in the early morning.



I remember when I lived in the more southerly part of the state as a child and we had several tremendous blizzards and I don't think we had mail or paper delivery in our rural community for at least at week. But yesterday in Peoria we did not receive a paper and the mailman did not appear. That is a first. So far this morning, we have also not received a paper. We live a ways back from the street so I hope the mailman doesn't try walking through the drifts just to deliver more catalogs today!

The new Bradley webcam is at http://explore.bradley.edu/bucam/.

virtual file cabinet

If you are like me, you get your best ideas when you first wake up in the morning, or a few minutes later in the shower or on the walk to work. When I woke up this morning I was thinking about all the papers in my cubicle. Even though this is a vacation day, I was thinking about cleaning out the file cabinets and throwing out obsolete forms and information, transforming the file cabinets for the twenty-first century semi paperless office.

So many forms and messages are sent as email attachments that if I want to maintain the paper files, I have to print them out and then file them. This doesn't make a lot of sense. But I think many of us like the spatial organization that a steel-and-paper filing system offers.

Currently, most computes use "folders" to organize information—tiny icons within icons of other folders. I think I would like a more visual and spatial filing system—a virtual file cabinet. The program would start by letting you choose metal, oak, or neon plastic for the cabinet. You could type labels for each drawer and drag and drop hanging files into the appropriate drawer. When you wanted to file a Word, Excel, or other document file, you could bring it into the virtual file cabinet program, where it would look like a paper document. You could drag and drop these into their appropriate files.

Don't know why, but a system such as this would make it easier for me to throw out a bunch of old files.

a walk to the polls

The sun shone down, a nice breeze accompanied me, and late fall leaves covered trees and the ground as I walked to the polls on Tuesday. I left work a little before noon and walked to the Presbyterian Church, which is about halfway between my office and home. Even though two precincts vote here, I had evidently come at a good time. I was greeted by several neighbors who were serving as election judges. Only two other voters were in line.

The new electronic voting machine confused me a little. I had used it in the spring primaries but hadn't remembered how it worked. I had remembered it churning out a paper ballot that I dropped in a box. My memory failed me. The machine does create a paper ballot, but it stays under a plastic panel - I couldn't touch it - and when you press "cast ballot," the paper gets conveyed into the machine.

I found it pretty easy to use. A woman behind me, however, was not amused by the new technology. She kept stammering "this is stupid," and "this is totally unnecessary, it is so stupid." I finished before she actually entered a booth, so I hope she didn't end up causing trouble for the volunteers.

They encouraged me to paste an "I voted" sticker on my shirt before I left. "It might remind someone else to vote," they said.

I proudly slapped it on and continued my walk home, where I ate a big bowl of soup, played with the kitten and petted the dogs, and turned on the news to see if the rest of the country was having a peaceful day at the polls.

I did hear of intimidation and obfuscation occurring in a few cities and of new electronic machines not working in others, but overall things seemed to be going well. Many of my coworkers talked of going to the county offices to vote early this year. That doesn't appeal to me as much a getting to walk to the polls on my lunch hour.

Halloween blogiversary!

When I came into work last Wednesday, I realized, as I relayed stories about my trick or treaters, that it had been last Halloween when I had started "Coffee and a Cubicle." I was joking about what this should be called - an "annibloggery" or "blogiversary? My husband said it should just be a "blog anniversary." After all, you don't say "Wediversary." "But this is the blogosphere," I told him. "It has a special blogcabulary."

I guess my thinking is in line with other bloggers. I googled "blogiversary" and found it to be in common usage. From urbandictionary.com:

1. blogiversary
The yearly anniversary of someones web-log (blog)

Ok, so let's ignore Urban Dictionary's redundancy and missing apostrophe, this is a good, simple definition.

The next question is how do you celebrate? I guess just by looking back on the past year. I don't find a lot of time to write, but when I have I thoroughly enjoyed typing these entries. I still dream of writing essays and short stories, so this helps fulfill that desire to communicate personal thoughts with a broader audience.

That brings me to another observation. Few people read this - my sister, my friend Cheri, one or two coworkers, and others who stumble on it by accident, or (be still my heart) by it coming up in a Google search. So, I have an audience of about six people in any given day. I'm elated!

I also have a goal. I would like to create a sister blog with information that would be helpful to others in university publications offices. I belong to several list serves, and I think a well-done blog could serve a similar function of bringing people with shared interests together.

My other goal, of course, is to write more frequent entries here.

Pull down thy vanity, I say pull down.

A quote from Ezra Pound, whose poetry I studied in grad school but never truly understood, has been running throught my brain these past few weeks:

"Pull down thy vanity, I say pull down."

So many of the interpersonal issues I encounter in the publications office seem to be a result of personal vanity. We each stand at the center of our own universe. My own offenses are legion.

My nephews, aged 5 and 8, have been taking Tae Kwon Do. On a recent Friday afternoon, they underwent a test for their first belt. They came to visit the next day and I asked them if they had passed. They told me they wouldn't find out until next week. "We have to learn to be humble," they told me.

What a wonderful lesson! Pride and vanity are not our friends. We all need to learn humility. So often we thrust our pride to the fore and it stands in the way of communication and collaboration. We do need to learn to stand up for ourselves and to not let others take advantage of us. But too often we resort to base vanity instead of true assertiveness.

the hard work of creativity

Although in my position in the Publications Office at Bradley University I spend lots of time doing mundane proofreading and formatting tasks, I also get to be creative. I write stories for our research publication, develop concepts for marketing or advancement pieces, and design covers for the schedule of classes and catalogs. I have always been fascinated with the process of creativity. In my graduate work, I studied the creative process of poets, such as Theordore Roethke and Emily Dickinson, who seemed to use their art to explore their own psychological growth, and who seemed to weave individual poems into groups where images and themes built on each other in complex ways. For both, the creative process involved enormous amounts of time and the enormous risk of psychological vulnerability.

"No one is born highly creative," says R. Keith Sawyer, Ph.D., associate professor of education and of psychology at Washington University in St. Louis. "Psychologists studying creativity have discovered that it is based on cognitive processes we all share. Creativity is not the result of some magic brain region that some people have and others don't." Sawyer thinks that creative people have developed good work habits.

He believes that a common pattern for creative people is to alternate periods of hard work with time spent doing something unrelated, like a lunch break, gardening, or a walk. Such time allows them to think of their problems in new ways. He says the "aha" moment often comes while doing something else.

I can agree with this theory. When I get stuck on a project, I often take a walk outside to enjoy nature and to see other people. I go for a tea or coffee. I might leave early for lunch. Sitting and staring at the blank canvas usually isn't productive. When you just enter a different room, or go outside, your mind starts thinking about other things. Sometimes, this allows another part of your mind to work on the problem.

So many times I develop ideas in the shower. The relaxing steam and fragrances let my mind wander. Sometimes I think I have washed my hair several times because I was so deep in thought I wasn't paying much attention to the actual task at hand.

Professor Sawyer also advocates employees taking all of their vacation time. He says that "Many people don't take their vacation and they end up rolling over all of their off time. If I were a senior manager, I would make everyone take all of their vacation time. Time away from work is essential for recharging the batteries, so to speak, and to help people think more creatively on the job. People need freedom in their schedule for idle time."

I agree. Sometimes we have to remind ourselves that hard work only goes so far in being successful at work. You do have to get away and develop other interests and other parts of your life. Doing so will allow you to bring new perspectives to the problems and creative tasks you deal with. Sometimes you have to let deadlines go unanswered. Sometimes you have to give up the worry. Sometimes the best thing you can do for your job is to just walk away from it.

You can find a good article about Dr. Sawyer's research at http://news-info.wustl.edu/tips/page/normal/6451.html.