Dear Diary,
They’re playing the music. What music doesn’t matter, they’re just playing it. Trapped and exposed in an open office plan, like a wounded antelope on the African plains waiting for a lion to pounce on and kill me, I sit at my desk with my headphones on, desperate to escape. Escape the noise, the distractions, the constant bombardment of people. My sanity eludes me. It runs free and out of my grasp–I see it in the distance, and it isn’t dancing to the beat of the conversation or the annoying music that one individual has decided to “share.” In my heart I know I’m in the right, and wonder if I would be applauded if I marched to the corner and yanked the speakers from the machine emanating that noise pollution. Were headphones not created for the personal enjoyment of music, so it wouldn’t have to be foisted upon those who didn’t want to hear it? Must I always be like the grumpy old man on the porch, yelling at the kids to get off his lawn?

Each day I try to become a better person, the person my dogs think I am, full of love, patience, and a keen sense of appropriateness. I fear this underlying sentiment of annoyance has set me back in my personal goals of better-person-ness, and I pray to the Office Gods of Music to bestow upon me a sense of patience and remove from me the desire to vandalize the computer speakers. Amen.