Preface to Initial Conclusion after One Day of Experimentation in the Field of Modular Thinking

Today I mastered the ability to do my job without the need for directed, conscious thought.

Let me explain: though I am a thoughtful soul, and would never advocate the voluntary suspension of conscious activity. However, as my job does not demand even the slightest pretence of such activity, I would much prefer my cognitive energies be directed toward something else. Anything else.

So I began experimenting, knowing that while the Western tradition is quick to separate body and mind into distinct, oppositional objects, the Eastern tradition is in large part based upon the idea of mind and body affecting each other in a holistic unity. Trance states, hypnosis, self-induced feats of superpowered mental control...all these are, theoretically, possible, in so much as anything is possible. Proceeding thusly, I managed to spend the entire day plotting a scene from my current story, while at the same time working a full days work to my usual high degree of capacity. I know, because my work is so routinized, so autonomic, so absolutely unvarying, that any variance in the movement of my hands, the timbre of my voice, or the inflection in my callers response instantly dragged me from my self-induced, story-plotting state (what my bosses would no doubt label “daydreaming”) and into full attention.

I didn’t fuck up. And I didn’t get caught. Loose yourself in a story, especially one of your own, in any other public place…a school, say…and it wouldn’t be long before the local jumped up authority figure came down on you hard for having a spark of interest in your glassy-eyed stare. (Capital crime in my old school…you could drool all you wanted as long as you trained your eyes to follow the teacher…but all the gods help you if you stared out the window.) But at our jobs we are truly isolated…as apart as you can be in a room full of people, answering the phone all day. The walls of our “pods” (a cubicle by any other name still has three sides and no privacy and no view of anything other than my coworkers cubicles) separate us from each other. The phones separate us from our “customers”. Office doors separate our supervisors from us and miles of distance separate me from my home, this apartment, this chair, and the…absolutely…beautiful creature sleeping in my bed…

The point is, no one noticed me. Tonight I came home, wrote down what I’d thought about, and found enough inspiration in that to write more. It was (even though my superstitions make me loath to admit it) a good day, all told. I hope to repeat my experiment tomorrow. Whoever may read this: wish me well. I’d do the same for you.