Field Note #6: Workus Interruptus: Fish For A Fortune

Project Stands started as a way of engaging people outside of Zoom, official meetings, or predictable places. I want to know what people are working on. What important work is being accomplished. What is lighting people up.

Today’s Project Stand offered something different. No mere waiting for someone to want to talk to a stranger about their project. Today they had a chance to play.

Too weird, maybe? Fishing for a Fortune in a crystal fishbowl …

I don’t think it was too weird.

People seemed 100% engaged in their laptop world. Through the ears, through multiple devices. Someone beside me had the most intricate bullet notes in impeccable tiny writing. I wouldn’t try to decipher it, but I admired the tiny tidiness. Alongside a laptop, lavish headphones and a tablet, complete with 11th Hour’s best brew. I was no more alive to this person than my chair.

Or, they were deep in conversation. Again, I was furniture.

But — I’m ancient compared to these people. And yet. I’m just like them. Give me my AirPods, my cortado, laptop and phone, and I’m in another country altogether!

Workus Interruptus only works if someone wants to be interrupted. And who really does?