Fade Out

Well, at least I found my umbrella.

I cleaned out my desk at 195 Broadway on Thursday and tomorrow morning I start at my company’s new location across the river in Hoboken.

Moving out an office is a scaled down version of moving out of an apartment.

You find stuff you’ve forgotten about, useless crap you wonder where you got and why you kept, and you take a personal inventory, looking back on your life and wondering what the hell you’ve been doing with your time.

I’ve been working at the downtown Manhattan location for close to seven years and I don’t relish a longer, more expensive commute, but I’m trying to think positively.

My old building is beautiful; it’s the original headquarters of American Telephone and Telegraph and Western Union, and the lobby itself is a work of an art. A scene from the Oliver Stone’s Wall Street was shot there, but you don’t really see much.

I always talked about shooting a short film in this fabulous location, but like a lot things that I talked about, I never actually did it.

During the clean up, I came across a pair of old boxing gloves, crumpled restaurant menus, outdated forms, and about a dozen dead batteries for my tape recorder.

I found a two-year old letter from Nationwide Insurance regarding my father’s estate and an article from Oprah.com entitled “Are You Listening to the Great Creator?” that I don’t think I ever read. Maybe I’ll review it tomorrow during the ride on the PATH train.

And there are all the books. Stack after stack of paperbacks and a few hardcovers that I had acquired over the years from the fourth floor cafeteria where others had left them.

I picked up so many books I could’ve opened a satellite branch of the New York Public Library in my cubicle. Most of them remain unread.

Making Book

I’ve tried to whittle down the pile over the last few weeks, joining my coworkers in dumping unwanted books on a shelf near the vending machines, which is starting to resemble the Island of Misfit Toys from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.

All those words and stories that will most likely end up in the trash. For an aspiring author it can be a little sobering seeing how all these books, all that creativity and hard work ends up.

And then there’s Chin Wong.

I’ve changed his name a little bit for privacy reasons, but I’m still wondering why I found a New York University ID card from 1995 bearing the name and the face of a total stranger.

I’ve got a fascination with ID photos and I’m wondering if I held on to this one with an aim of doing a blog post about it. Possibly—but where the hell did I get it?

It might have been in my desk before I moved in, but I don’t recall seeing it. Whoever he is, I hope he’s doing well. And I really hope he doesn’t want his ID card back because I managed to lose it on Friday.

The rest of the stuff I packed into two cardboard boxes that will be shipped off to Hoboken. Then I tacked a photo of Grumpy Cat on the wall of my cubicle and left 195 Broadway behind.

I worked from home on Friday and when I looked through my laptop’s carrying case I found an umbrella that I had misplaced weeks ago.

I have no idea how it got into the case, but in light of tomorrow’s dismal weather forecast, I’m very glad I found it.

Thunder is rumbling all around my house right now and there’s a storm raging in my mind. I’m nervous about the change and about the future, but I think it’s best if I switch off all this drama and put everything into the hands of the Great Creator.

I’ve got a new desk to fill.