The Little Embarrassments

My job requires me to write... a lot. And when I write, I often like to listen to music. Good music can help me focus and increase my productivity. This is especially true recently, as I am working right next to an active construction site, with the clanging and the grinding and the pounding!The presence of headphones clamped to the sides of my melon also serves as a signal to others that I am in "The Zone".

Well, recently I have taken to listening to Pandora while at work, and because instrumental music tends to be the best music to play while writing, I have set my station to base it's selection on a variety of epic movie soundtracks. Now, in my gaming life, I am currently building a series of soundtracks to help generate a certain atmosphere at the gaming table. In an effort to kill two vicious extraplanar birds with one stone of banishment, I have started jotting down the names and artists of interesting songs that come up on my Pandora queue. I have a little piece of scrap paper tucked under my keyboard and when something I like comes on, I take five seconds to jot down the title, artist and general feel of the song (e.g. gloomy, magical, desert). The process doesn't disrupt my writing or really take any time at all... Still, it's a little weird for the workplace, so I keep the list tucked under my keyboard all private like.

Then, this morning, I came in and saw my list pulled out from my keyboard, naked for all the world to see! Did I slide it out while getting ready to leave last night? Did the cleaning staff actually come through and clean? Or -horror!- did one of my coworkers, or worse, my boss need something from my desk and accidentally stumble upon my personal notes?

Suffice it to say, I'm a bit mortified this morning. I know I didn't do anything wrong. Building this list did not distract from my usual work. I don't even know if anyone actually saw it! But still, there is something about unexpected collisions between at-work and at-home personalities that can leave a guy red in the face.