Refreshing work E-mail

Refreshing work E-mail. I'm not referring to refreshing in the sort of way that Coke wants you to think of on a summer afternoon. Not the sort of thing where you start handing Cokes to strangers on the street and they suddenly realize what a stand up person you are, and that they should probably stop drinking booze and cheating on taxes and such. Nor is it the sort of refreshing where suddenly all of your friends are smiling and laughing and attractive enough to be in a coke commercial.
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No. What I mean is that moment when you are refreshing your work e-mail. I often do other tasks during the course of the day that take me away from my e-mail. (Insert fun here). And when I return to my computer and hit the refresh button on my inbox, occasionally it takes a bit of time. And here lies the question for anyone reading this. When my inbox takes a while to update, like it's really thinking hard about something, and the wheel is spinning and spinning, what do you/I think?

a) I'm going to have a shi- ton of e-mails to get to when this thing finally loads up.

B) Why are we still using LotusNotes. Hasn't anyone realized that it's an obsolete e-mail operating system. Could it be any more annoying?

c) Am I really thinking about the quality of my work e-mail's operating system? What has gone wrong in my life that has lead me to this point? I largely blame....

d) This computer is so slow. When the hell is it going to update? While I'm waiting I might as well open my regular e-mail to see if anyone has sent me an innocuous message in the thirty seconds since I checked it last.

E) I've been fired. I've been let go. My e-mail is going to load and it's going to be a message from my boss informing me that I'm fired. That's why it's taking so long. My e-mail knows I just can't handle this in my life right now, and it's waiting to break me the news.

F) I wonder how many meetings I've missed today. Hopefully this e-mail lets me know.

So, which one? And what does that say about you? I fall in to category e. I have the tendency to associate long e-mail waits with the expectation that I'm being fired for some reason. Is this rational? Well, yes. Theoretically I could be fired at any point. Is it probable. Well, no. I've worked for nine months in the same jobs receiving e-mails ever day, none of which have included the information that I'm fired. We're not even talking about a guilt complex. In fact, I've done nothing that would remotely warrant my firing. So why all the upheaval when it doesn't load? I don't really have an answer, but I'd be interested to hear if anyone else ever experiences a-f in any way shape or form or whether I'm just kind of going it alone hear in my insanity.

Some writing advice from Dave Wallace:

Wallace (A story he likes) This needs more control. It's kind of just the head vomiting at us.

(On that old MFA classic): This is just your average campus romance story. I've go to tell you, to the average citizen, this is just not that interesting.

On characters: To have the narrator be funny and smart, have him say funny, smart things from time to time.

Wallace (though the parenthetical's are mine) : The key to writing (and good old fashioned human relationships one could argue)is learning to differentiate private interest from public entertainment. Because, if it's interesting to me, I automatically imagine it's interesting to you. I could spend a half hour telling you about my trip to the store, but that might not be as interesting to you as it is to me.

Fiction Cont

Jerry waved the discarded bottle in his hands, making circles as if he were a boxer trying to find his jab. And me. Where was I? I was on the cold cement next to Julie, listening to her cry. We could see the action going on inside from the balcony but were hidden in the dark. I ran my hand through her hair. “It’ll be okay,” I murmured, very softly into her ear. “I’m here. I’m here.”

Her hair smelled fine, like streets after a summer shower. I was on her left side wearing a pair of Omnitrons with dual density grip—suitable for all seasons. We sat next to a plant that I’d kept on the balcony, a tiny shrub that smelled slightly of home. The two guys in the living took turns punching Jerry, who had lost his bottle, in the ribs. Steve screamed something at the guys that none of us could understand. Julie and I half-watched this, breathing softly, half-watching the city below, wishing that the distance between us would empty and that we could cross over into that sea of lights.

Freud calls motivated forgetting psychogenic amnesia. He describes it as an act of self-preservation, an alternative to suicide. Would it have been suicide to reenter that room where my two friends were being roundly beaten? I think not. But as I sat in the dark, aware of the distances between things I remember, though perhaps it didn’t happen, hearing the crack of Jerry’s ribs and a howl of pain akin to that of a forlorn dog on an empty city street. It was at this point in time that I blacked out, the night sealing me in its embrace. I came to when the medics arrived. I remember the flecked blood on Jerry’s lips, and I watched as they strapped down his body which was wracked by uncontrollable shivers. It is not often that you bear firsthand witness the tears of another adult male.

After they had left, I drove Julie home. We were silent for most of the trip. The myriad of turns in the maze like city, diagonal streets be damned, reminded me of what it was to have been like if the plans of L’Enfant had come to fruition: a series of dark canals weaving darkly through crumbling buildings. I imagined all the cab drivers being replaced by knobby handed men plying these strange waters at night. I’ve no earthly clue what Julie thought of me passing out.