Work Residual

We look at the exterior of a building and describe it's character and often it's attractiveness or lack thereof.  Cleaning garage usually starts at the door.  Usually we don't look at the supporting structures of the building and we rarely get to the back corners of the garage.  We start where we should be finishing.

Eleven months has gone by quickly and slowly.  Regretfully I've not put my hands or eyes in all the recesses and dark corners that I had wished.  This morning I started at the darkest corner which happens to be the electronic collections of my life (computer).  That was overwhelming so I had a Coke and decided to work on the debris surrounding one of many of the household's workstations.

When I left my 27-year gig I brought home four or five boxes.  Most of that has been recycled.  What I have remaining fits in a legal sized expanding folder, primarily documents from before my move to almost exclusively electronic storage.  The work ranges primarily from 1986 to 2001 with a few documents later, and nothing after the great recession of 2008-2009.  There is no reason to keep this.

One of my favorite dark films is About Schmidt.  Jack Nicholson plays an
insurance actuary in Omaha who is retiring or being forced out.  His legacy, in his mind, is an actuarial forecasting model for one of the company's insurance products.  During a later visit he finds it next to the dumpster.  Interestingly, I believe it was about four or five boxes.  Hopefully in the imagined world surrounding this movie he has one remaining legal sized expanding folder.