For years, I have accumulated boxes of notebooks waiting for - I don’t know - some monumental event that would force me to be home and read through them in search of what is good, significant, interesting, garbage.
Now, with a global pandemic upon us, my excuses have vanished, and I am digging up writings from the past 15 years. Here, I share a postcard from a time where my working life was ahead of me and where everything felt new.
I remember having specific expectations for the jobs I would have, even if they were, at that time, a thing of the future. “I will never have a desk job,” I said to a classmate during my first year in University. We were walking back from class to my room at the Leblanc residence, a red brick dormitory for francophone students at the University of Ottawa. I was convinced: offices were for grown-ups who had abandoned hope to make daily life as exquisite as it could be. That wouldn’t be me. My friend was doubtful of my open-air vision of a workspace, and put me back in my place: “It all depends on the job you’re doing at the desk”.
She was right, but I wasn’t listening. To me, a desk job was a life sentence, a loss of independence, an act of surrender to the forces that control our lives and everything we create, make and produce. Nothing could be more dreadful than being stuck behind a desk. I was not ready to fall in line so soon.
I was, though, far from imagining my future as a crane operator, or as an electrician, or as any other profession that is practiced with the absence of a desk. I had chosen to study journalism, a line of work where a lot of time would be spent sitting at a desk. I guess I was trying to imagine where I would end up after the mystical job search, without really understanding yet that it may never end. I would have dozens of new jobs, but desk monotony was not in my plans.
How could I be proud of my work if it was done in a closed space, without any windows or fresh air? I was afraid of work without shine, without surprises, without creativity. I wasn’t going to be one of those grown-ups who doesn’t like their job.
Six months later, almost to the day, I was offered my first job on campus. I was pumped about the gig: ten hours a week as part of a team who would talk to students about health and nutrition. The position was way off the beaten path, but at 19 years old, I was all about expanding my sphere of activity, not constricting it. Funny part: I was assigned a desk where I had to work fixed office hours every week. It even came with a cabinet to file paperwork.
I remember a sense of freedom that pushed me to put my name in the hat for the job. I was looking for part-time work, I read the description and was immediately interested. I had no concern about the future, or about the professional implications of this particular position. I applied and got it a few weeks later. I was so proud, and ready to work. I was going to produce everything I needed to produce in high quantity and of the highest quality. When I sat at the designated table for my first shift, I had completely forgot the self-imposed rule I made just a few months before.
The following year, I was keeping an eye on job offers at the French student newspaper. I had written for the community newspaper when I was in high school. I was full of anticipation and fear about my own competence. They were real pros, the people who worked at La Rotonde.
I wrote a few volunteer pieces, and after a few months got a job as assistant editor for the Culture & Society section. Then followed two high-paced years where, with a great team, we produced a weekly 26-page newspaper. Even for $100 per week, endless hours of revisions and corrections over the weekend, it was the most gratifying work I had engaged in so far. My school marks were somewhat affected, but since I was a journalism student, I always asked my professors to review the latest edition of the paper to give us feedback. I hoped they would notice I was pumping out three or four articles every week, in addition to their class assignments.
The most anguishing, and satisfying at the same time, was to work all week and to see, on Monday morning, the new edition of the paper already printed and distributed all over campus. It was a final product we could evaluate, for better or for worse. A hot cake straight out of the oven. A collective work that we were all proud of, and from which we would build the next edition.
At this time, I was becoming more and more confident in the art I had chosen to develop, which was writing and journalism. I was writing piece after piece, I was covering all sorts of events, and I was entirely enthralled by the newspaper production process.
I was feeling a little les confident about my knowledge of the broader world and how it works. I was interested in political issues without knowing very much about politics. I was curious about history without having studied it very much. I was missing the what and the how in my journalistic practice.
I could not accept to be a journalist without being adequately informed and educated on the big issues I had the mandate to report on. It seemed unfair and irresponsible. I knew how to report the news, but I didn’t know how they became news. What shaped them? What pushed the news into the field of vision of the journalists? I wanted to step on the other side of the notebook. I wanted to be a part of the action.
So I did. I travelled, I organized events, I got involved. I got elected to my students’ union. I managed a budget. I ran campaigns. I did media interviews. I worked to support workers facing exploitation. I tried to convince people to join a movement that would be stronger if they were in, not out. I found communities that I cared about and try to move them forward. I did a bunch of things that I knew other people did when we reported on them in the news.
It was exciting and inspiring. And tiring at times. The funny part is that, as you’ll guess, most of this work ended up being done at a good old fashioned desk. Sometimes with windows, sometimes without. Sometimes with a door, other times in a shared working space. Sometimes with a broken desk phone, or a computer that you couldn’t shut off by fear that it would not come back from its deep sleep. Always with the chatter of other people who cared as much about doing good things. So, I learned, it really does depend on the job you’re doing at the desk.