Taking A Walk

by Dwayne Phillips

While I was taking a walk, I was what I’ll call “semi-employed.” During 2008, I was employed by the government. During 2009, I was employed by a corporation. Well, sort of employed. The situation was very different in the two years, but equally complex. I won’t go into the details (boring), but suffice to say that I had to keep up with what was happening in the world and with my jobs.

My semi-employment kept me busy on a computer in the morning and the evening of each day. I blogged about walking every day. I studied technology and blogged about that every day (see here and here for a specific example). I kept records on miles walked, miles driven, and all expenses. I kept photographs and ordered them by day and type of photo. My semi-employment kept me busy. Many evenings were tough to do as I was tired from the day.

One morning while researching technical trends, I read a post about the search in vain for the paperless office. I have never worked in a paperless office, and the blog writer had not either. At that moment I realized that while taking a walk I was working in a paperless office. I did not have a printer with me. I did not have a ream of paper with me – not even a sheet of printer paper. All my notes were on my computer and on the blogs “out there in the clouds” as the marketing people would proclaim.

I had a paperless office.

Wow. Maybe I was on the cutting edge of something. I doubt that, but I was doing something that I had never done. I love to work on paper while writing. A sheet of paper helps me to “see” the big picture of what I am doing. For me, “seeing” everything like that has always been important. Yet, here I was writing, organizing, managing, working, and planning without a single sheet of paper. I had adapted and was functioning sufficiently.

I had not thought about his before the walk began. That is an embarrassed admission as I try to think of everything before embarking on such an endeavor. This – the paper – was one thing I had not considered.