Where am I?

Your diary for today is full, back to back meetings in various locations across the city. You have no chance of getting from A to B and be on time so either have to spend your day repeatedly apologising for being late or see your diary as a rough guide and make the best of it. It's all somewhat abstract especially in estimating how long it will take to hold a conversation for which no one participant owns the outcome. But we play the game. Observe the ceremonies. We know the start time is more important than the end. We're pinching the wind too. If we're close to reaching agreement then it's better to stretch out the meeting and gain a result than slavishly adhere to the schedule, pause the conversation in some hope that it can be resumed in the future. Priorities are being juggled. All those spinning plates need to be kept in motion. You have someone looking after your diary and it transforms into something you're slightly removed from to the point where, embarrassingly you need briefing as to its contents. It can change dynamically whilst you're out and about. You have to monitor the calendar on your phone to see what's changing during the day. Instant messages are firing in, keeping your phone vibrating against your thigh to the point phantom spasms have you checking it constantly. All within a constant background noise of email. Waves and waves of direct or copied in messages often short, terse and passively aggressive or long papers showing signs of weeks of drafting and refinement. All of them are seemingly ignorant that email is asynchronous, one way traffic even if polite convention invites the necessity of reply. When are you supposed to be replying if you spend all day “doing meetings”? On top of this many messages come in that aren't from people. System to system confirmations, updates, warnings, alerts, requests for approval in labyrinthine bureaucratic processes - all contributing to hiding the signal from the noise, the information you must react to asap or “things” will get worse. Your last meeting has over run but you let it as it was about money. The person who runs your diary walks you out if the building telling you about stuff going on in the team that you can't ignore. You stride out across town to make up time. After chancing it at numerous road junctions you arrive at a hotel, scan the list of meetings on the electronic wall and fail to see yours. You look at your phone and see the meeting is still there in your calendar. An inefficient number of clicks later and you dig out the details. You're supposed to be in a different hotel, similarly named but across town, ironically quite close to the office you were last in. This is out of character. Is something going on? Are you trying to do too much and not focussing on the details? Is this a canary in the mine for stress or a momentary aberration? Is this the start of a steady descent for which the end game is you found staggering across a traffic island at night, drunk, slurred of speech, irregularly attired, shouting at passing cars? Has the process been underway for some time? You look at your phone as you walk at pace, retracing your steps. It is littered with instant messages asking “where are you”.  You reach the hotel, navigate the layout, not even pausing to question why the conference suites are in the third floor. You enter the room and there's a packed room of people sat round a long table. You’re directed to a set aside seat and realise quickly that you're not just making up the numbers in this session. You're one of two people leading on a narrative. You confess to idiocy before they can and start talking. The day continues. The pattern repeats, days become weeks then months then quarters. Sitting on a pretty painted horse on a carousel as it spins round and round can be dizzying, the stimuli addictive. We wish for it to speed up, to enforce the facade of the working day, of work, of life.