Looking through old pictures from 2000, trying to find a particular photo, I spotted a mass of images from my last office in midtown. I have no memory of taking or even seeing these pictures but I think they were taken as I tried out some new camera gear and gadgetry at the office.

I tend to obliterate obvious memories from my skull, favoring the random and unlikely, and my memories of corporate favor incidental life experiences over professionalism or “career”. Little if anything from my corporate experience informs what I do today, reflecting not the uselessness of corporata but the swiftness with which life can change. It seems appropriate to me that these images are mostly distorted or warped, reflecting the shape of my memories of this place. Memory itself, I think, looks like this.

I have no nostalgia for my corporate youth, nor do I have any regrets. “Regrets” might seem a strong word, but one could resent a period of life spent staring into a computer screen, toiling away for someone else’s benefit. I rarely have reason to recall specifics about my corporate youth, though I am friends with some former colleagues who occasionally talk to me like I still inhabit that world. To hear them describe it today that world (limited not just to this company) seems to comprise continuous layoffs and job eliminations as a once-mighty publishing industry seems to shrivel a little more with each ever-thinner magazine issue. Any business, it seems, that depends on sales of printed matter for its subsistence is in peril, regardless of its heritage.

I remember the feeling of exhaustion that came from expending so much energy on fear — fear of getting fired, fear of not getting fired and thus taking on the work of those who did, fear that someone else getting fired will go ape shit and tear up the office — fear like this is not necessarily rational and it is rarely productive, but for today’s ephemeral reporting structures it is common enough as to not even be called fear. You take on new projects with an eye toward who would be responsible for them after you get fired, and with a plan on how you will re-group on this project when that person gets fired and you get re-hired.

I used to think getting fired from a job was like being murdered or excommunicated from a church. You didn’t look at the fired ones. You didn’t talk to them. You turned away, unable to expose yourself to the grotesque splattering of professional disembowelment and personal humiliation.

I don’t think of firings like that now. Everybody gets fired, bestowing no particular privilege or honor on those who “survive” at a company, and branding those who do the firings with the only enduring stigmas. Nowadays I feel that if you’ve never been fired from a job then something isn’t right. It’s like you haven’t lived.

I worked at corporate for one purpose: to pay off my student loans and other debts, and then establish some sense of financial stability. It must be 11 years ago now but I remember the one mouse click that paid off a long-time credit card bill, leaving it at the $0 monthly balance at which all my credit cards have remained ever since. Debtlessness is the greatest freedom, and the finest form of wealth. Even a $10 bar tab weighs heavily on my sense of serenity. I have never liked money, and I aim simply to have all that I need. ^{[I think I just paraphrased a line from the television show The Adventures of Black Beauty.]} At corporate I felt more and more conspicuous with every pay-raise, and for me conspicuity breeds discontent — especially financial conspicuity. Nevertheless (and due mostly to the inertia that comes from simply having a job) I remained at corporate longer than I would have had I stayed true to my initial intent of using the job strictly for money to pay off debts. I finally got fired in 2001, which was the luckiest thing to happen to my work life since getting hired at that company in 1995, but I imagine I might return to similar environs one day.

I pass by this office once in a while, sometimes trying to tell what goes on in there now. The office was bigger than my first three New York City apartments combined, and had more windows than all the apartments I have ever lived in. I think it was turned into a conference room, though I saw boxes piled high for some time, suggesting it was used for storage.