One day. I had a scheduled meeting at 2:00 pm. Thirty minutes prior, I felt sleepy. So I reclined my chair, lifted my legs, and dozed off. My laptop did the same. At exactly 2:00 pm, Nikkei woke me up for the meeting. Still giddy from the power nap, I woke my machine up, put on my earphones, cleared my throat, and joined the meeting.
“Good afternoon.”
I was a minute late but who cared? Nobody. The organizers were still waiting for tardier people to join in.
—
Another day. While at Landers, I told Rissa I’ll wait at the resto section to do some work while she wove through isles of groceries. Just one of our weekly dates on weekdays. Work here means I have my mobile phone with me, connected to the Internet, with no pen or paper. I was wearing a cap, my old pair of chino shorts, and Andre’s pair of white slip-on Birks. There were emails to respond to, emails to read, and emails to ignore. Busy, busy, yes. Heck, by the time my wife showed up at the counter to pay, I was almost through a successful negotiation for a project in Cebu. It was silent work —no words came out of my mouth and nothing needed to be heard.
—
Thirty years ago when I was still working for a hi-tech multinational company, these daily grinds were unimaginable. If someone had told me then that the future would look like this, I would have whacked his tail for prophesying falsely. Sure, a CEO of the 90s can play golf and do business with his massive phone of mass equaling a car’s battery, telling his secretary to do this and not that —no, it’s not the same. It’s far beyond what it was before.
I can only wonder what work would be like a decade from now. I’d be disappointed if they would still call it work by then. I may still be around to find out.
Cheers to future daily grinds!
If you’ve been touched, amused, or entertained by this post, or it put a smile on your face, please favor me with a cup of coffee. I will continue writing.
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