The Suck

It has been a somewhat hectic week here in Kansas. I am trying to get my head around the ever-increasing scope of the project I have been hired to work on. Originally I was supposed to be the conceptual artist and content creator for a certain major university's national network television commercial. Then, I was supposed to be the creative director for the commercial. Now, I am being asked to develop a media-neutral communications campaign strategy. This might be the worst case of scope-drift I have ever seen.

Additionally, I am beginning to fall victim to a phenomenon I call The Suck. The Suck is kind of like institutional undertow. It is a slow and steady force of institutional nature. It is a way in which an individual is gradually sucked into a myriad of projects, committees, initiatives, etc until they are inextricably tied up and can't actually get the things the need to accomplish done.

Here is an example of how The Suck works.

You are sitting at your unbalanced metal desk in a terribly uncomfortable chair bought from the local correctional facility. The fluorescent flood light above your desk flickers and hums. As you read the minutes from the most recent staff meeting you make a mental note to yourself to get on the committee in charge of fixing up the office. In the minutes you read that one coworker, let's call him Tom is working on a video project about research professors at your institution of higher learning. Another coworker, Page, is working on a series of public radio shorts about research in general at the university. A third coworker, Millie, is working on a viewbook for high-ability high school students. A fourth coworker, Fred, is working on revamping the website.

After reading the minutes you sit at your computer, intending to begin your own work on, let's say, a calendar of events. But you can't get over how little Tom, Page, Millie and Fred talk to each other even though they are working on very similar stuff. You wonder whether a grassroots approach or a top-down approach is the answer. You schedule two meetings, one with your boss the other with your co-workers to feel out both angles. You daydream for about 20 minutes about how either approach might increase productivity and strengthen our major marketing messages across all mediums. You fantasize about the way in which a clear marketing and communications strategy with defined and measurable outcomes could revolutionize the way you work.

The phone rings. Your boss is intrigued by the email request for a meeting and asks you to join an oversight committee. You are flattered and sketch away at some thumbnails for your calendar while she talks. As you hang up the phone you lament the fact that you don't have a Wacom tablet to input all of your sketches directly into your project folder on the server. You wonder how long it will take to locate a student to scan your drawings for you so that you can get on with some real work.

After a couple of hours of now sitting at a desk that is not the right height and a chair that is not built for comfort you take a walk out of your windowless, fluorescent office in search of a little back pain relief and daylight. You watch as the white, middle class college students poor up and down the main drag of campus, flipping their flops, bopping to iTunes and chatting away on hand held devices. None of them are carrying a newspaper. A quarter of them have laptops. You realize 1/2 the work you do in your office is outdated. And, the provost's charge to make the university a more diverse place - in every sense of the word - is a huge challenge that will require years of work.

You go back to your office and sketch a few more thumbnails before going to a meeting about how many cubicle systems to order. All you can think is, "NO, not cubicles, we need a more stimulating environment." But, you concede the need to think towards office growth and inadvertently make it seem as though you are with everyone else and pro cubicle. After the meeting you answer a slough of emails, several of which are from Page, Tom, Millie and Fred who really want to meet about something substantial, but are having a hard time fitting your meeting in between all the other meetings. The five of you settle on a date two weeks in the future.

Then finally you have an hour to design, but of course, now, you have no ideas and the bland slate grey second-hand office furniture you are literally surrounded by offers no inspiration. You muddle through, somehow, putting color, form, line back into your life. Putting meaning back into your life. Then you realize your entire day was awash. Another victim of The Suck.

It is coming for us all. Can you hear it. It sounds like an inverted train. A metaphysical wind tunnel in the back corner of the office building. Will we all be lost to it?