4 Birth Months Who Need A Job With A View
Some people take an office tour and ask where they’ll park. You’re quietly working out whether you could see the sky from that desk. The work matters, but so does the place where you’ll spend so much of your week. For these four birth months, what’s outside the window is part of what makes a workplace appealing.
March: Somewhere For Your Mind To Wander
March, you can spend a surprising amount of time looking at one small patch of sky. A dark cloud moves behind a rooftop, and suddenly you’re imagining the view as the opening scene of a movie. Someone in the building opposite turns on a lamp. You wonder what they’re making for dinner. You’ve been waiting for a file to download for forty seconds and have already invented a supporting cast.
A blank wall doesn’t give you much to work with. Neither does the framed print everyone walks past without seeing anymore. You like a view that changes while you’re busy, so there’s something new waiting when you look up. Rain arriving at an angle. One bright window after the rest of the building has gone dark.
The file finishes downloading. You open it, though you’ve decided the person across the way is definitely making pasta.
May: Beauty On An Ordinary Tuesday
May, the tree outside your workplace has been doing excellent work all year, and you feel it deserves more recognition. You noticed the first leaves. You noticed when they grew thick enough to hide the parked cars. Now there’s one yellow branch you can see from your chair, and you keep looking up to check whether the rest has caught on.
You don’t need a coastline or a corner office. A courtyard with something growing in it would do. You like catching the afternoon light on the leaves while you answer an email, or noticing that something has flowered since yesterday. Those are details you’d miss from a desk facing the wall.
When someone suggests moving your desk farther inside, they point out that you’d have more storage. You look at the extra drawers, then back at the tree. You can clear out a drawer.
June: A Little Life Outside The Window
June, your ideal view might horrify someone who specifically requested peace and quiet. You’d happily face a busy square. There’s a florist putting buckets outside, someone trying to fold an uncooperative umbrella, two friends who have stopped to talk directly in everyone else’s way. It’s a very good morning out there. You appreciate being kept informed.
Even when you’re perfectly content with the task in front of you, hours of silent work can leave you feeling oddly removed from people. Another meeting wouldn’t necessarily help. You don’t always want to speak; sometimes you just want to look up and see other lives happening alongside yours. By the end of the week, you recognize the person who walks past with two dogs at lunchtime. Today they have three. You watch long enough to confirm this development, then turn back to your work.
December: A Reason To Take The Long Way Home
December, you’d choose the desk where you can see beyond the next building. There’s a road climbing a hill, a path beside the water, or a row of shops you’ve never visited. When you look up from your work, you often spot somewhere you’d like to go afterward.
For a while, it’s enough to look. Then you start wondering about the lit sign on a distant building. You can make out a few letters, but never the whole name. At lunch, you find the street on a map. There’s a small cinema there, on a block you’ve somehow never visited despite looking toward it every working day.
You finish what you’re doing and check the route again before leaving. The familiar commute can wait. Tonight, you’re going to find out what that building looks like from the front.