0723 _c o nv e r g e_

0723 _c o nv e r g e_

last night I arbitrarily chose Clockwatchers (1997, Jill Sprecher) which I'd never seen.

So good. Kind of reminded me of something by Jacque Tati and had to see if it was before or after Office Space. it was before.

Really funny but not in the way that films at that time did humor, which I really loved about this. I also loved that this film spent a lot of time on the characters thinking about their boring, boxed-in lives. Lesser movies would have established that they hate their lives and by the second act they'd do something nutty about fixing that. Not this one. It struck me that inactivity was the way we dealt with this. And I vividly remember those times. I had at least 2 temp jobs through Manpower Temp Agency right at the time this film was being made. They weren't as oppressive as the credit company our quartet of protagonists are stagnating in, but I get it. I totally (gen x word) relate to everything that happens to the characters in this wonderfully realized film. 

Today I thought about it more (as is always the case the day after a movie night) and something suddenly dawned on me:

at this moment there is a cassette sitting in my tape recorder in my studio room of voice journals from 1997! I pressed play and it began "today is my last day at my day job at the CAP and we're going out to celebrate tonight". It goes through a bunch of short recordings of talking to my coworkers who had come out to the bar and wish me well after my last official day at the office. That was my last office day job in Chicago. Wild.

I didn't consciously choose Clockwatchers last night.. it just happened to line up that way. Fun. Ok. I allow that there was probably subconscious stuff motivating that choice.

It's a happy thing that here I am, having recently left the last day job I'll ever have (probably) and I have stuck to the ideals of what a good life is even to this day. I used to make lists of how the "perfect day" would go for me and today's routine is nearly identical to those lists from 30 years ago. 

Anyway, I'm going to listen to that tape all the way through now..