The Joyful Monotony of Being a Team-Player...

While at work a couple weeks ago, someone asked if anyone wanted to help with stuffing the annual cards we send out to various clients for the holidays in December.

Most people usually balk at the task, but not me. Why? 'Cause they put you at a table with no phone, no paperwork to file, and best of all - very little to concentrate on i.e. let your mind wander. Yes, this was my time to exploit a "team effort".

Enthusiastically, I volunteer and take up the task, marching into it with all the gusto and flair of a man possessed by St. Nick himself. Okay, there were risks: papercuts (got two of them), tearing and or scrunching the cards by accident, or just plain getting carpal tunnel from all the repetition of opening, stuffing, and sealing a mass amount of envelopes. But they were risks I was willing to take.

It's usually slow going at first - finding the right rhythm of the folding and stuffing, and then managing the pile. But after about 5 minutes, I was treating it like an assembly line, where I was "Card Master" - open, fold, tuck, seal. And, repeat.

The world went by, as time slowed to a peaceful crawl in my sanctuary of greeting card forts, and most of all, silence. It took me about 2 hours to finish them all, and I think I might have purposely slowed down by the last 50 so that I could savor this tiny little "work vacation" I was having - er, I mean, enduring.

Alas, no fun thing lasts forever, and after dropping off the HUGE box of cards, I sludged back to my desk to go about more air freight and drone around my piles of paperwork.

But for the rest of that afternoon I was like, "Man, those papercuts were totally worth it"...