Poetry exercise: I am from

[azurelunatic]

... in the workplace, including at least two significant traumas, after the poem "Where I'm From" by George Ella Lyon.


I am from the supply closet
fine-tipped pens and highlighters
I am from the IKEA bag under the desk
stuffed with post-its and painter's tape
I am from the spreadsheet
untitled.xls, untitled(1), untitled(4)final
untitled(4)final_really_truly

I am from the telephone
from your dinnertime
from my nighttime
answering your computer questions.

I am from the five thousand
separate
CSS
sheets
one for each page
one for each endpoint
in the helpdesk software

I am from the wiki
Going to the wiki
Coming from the wiki

I am User:Alunatic/Office
still used ten years later
full of useful links
holding up where the helpdesk crumbles
into little grains
of nonthinking sand

---

Context: someone in 2019 thought that writing a poem about your background including things that make you cry a little when you dig up the memories, was an appropriate workplace bonding activity to then be read aloud at a meeting. The internet was not kind. https://agonyaunt.dreamwidth.org/502747.html

Comments

[alexseanchai]

can't help but remember the multiple different incidents I've read about where a teacher assigned basically that to their students and then was shocked and horrified when some of the assignments came back containing nonfictional horror stories.

[azurelunatic]

Yuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuup!

[silveradept]

That exercise sounds like a perfect opportunity for someone to write a poem about all the things that the organization itself has done to traumatize them and hurt them.

[azurelunatic]

That's still vulnerability in the middle of a potentially bad org, alas.

[silveradept]

Alas. I had envisioned it as something written with maximum embarrassment in mind, but then again, in some of those organizations, they can't actually be embarrassed enough for such a tactic to work.