midway mermaid: day 2

that's awkward.

i'm leaving work early to get a cavity filled and then trekking to brooklyn for violin class before schlepping home to the heights. since it would be really awkward to carry today's trash through all of that with me, i was planning to collect it before leaving and then store the bag under my desk until tomorrow.

however, it's time to do it and i can't bring myself to collect it. people are still at their desks. going through my co-workers' garbage after they've left for the day feels kind of awkward and a little invasive...but doing it while they're still sitting right there? that's maybe too weird. i don't need to go being quite *that* eccentric in the workplace.

the goal is a month's worth of garbage. that's 20 working days. no one said they have to be consecutive. heck, i'm the one making all the rules here anyway. i'll just collect one more day on the tail end and skip today.

but just two days into the project, this shit's already interesting...in more interpersonal and intrapersonal ways than i expected. i'm seeing that this experience is going to be about more in the end -- at least for me -- than just having a quantifiable amount of garbage on stage.

midway mermaid: day 1

can i have your garbage?

that was the subject of the email i sent to co-workers asking them to let me take their workday waste home with me to use in the midway mermaid project. definitely not an email one expects to receive from a co-worker (um, or anyone?), but they were good sports about it.

carrying a white kitchen garbage bag filled with to-go containers home with me on the subway elicited some interesting looks and an unusually large buffer around me.

today's lesson: if you don't want people all up in your personal space on the subway, carry a bag of garbage with you.