I don’t have a poker face. You may not always be able to read what I am thinking or feeling but you know something is happening. I would be a terrible spy, even though I have an alternate universe in my mind where I am 100% Sydney Bristow. Speaking or not, when I have a thought or feeling about anything, it will move across my face like the weather. There is zero chance that if you are looking at me when this happens that you’ll miss it.

This is why mute and turning the camera off, are two functions of Zoom that have saved me from me on far more occasions than I care to count. It happened as recently as Wednesday. I was in a meeting when someone that I know shared a new career aspiration. This new venture, to me, seemed so wildly in contradiction to who I know them to be that my mouth fell open; agape actually, and then I uttered a phrase of incredulity that I cannot repeat here.

Do you ever wonder how it’s possible for the version that we know of someone and the version they seem to know of themselves to be so radically different? How does that happen? Of course, we don’t know everything about anyone, including ourselves but sometimes it’s so surprising that it leaves you confused. I am still mystified every time I think about it. When it comes to mind it feels as if there is this weird wrench, or extra bolt just banging around loose in my brain getting caught in all the gears. (I don’t know about you, I either envision my brain to be a lot of gears and levers or an incredibly unruly clothesline)

It leaves me to ponder, am I that terrible at gauging who people are? Am I far more inobservant than I imagine? Keep in mind, I fancy myself quite observant because this is how I fuel the sarcasm that is my life’s blood. You cannot be sarcastic if you are not paying attention. You simply cannot. 

I understand that people can change. I do. I simply never imagined they could change so much that you didn’t see it, notice it, or sense it in any way until the day they say they are leaving their accounting job and going to join a Goth band. What’s more disorienting is they tell you this while still wearing a suit, not betraying a single Goth-like trait, Trust me, it leaves you turning your head sideways like dogs do when they are trying to understand our human ways. 

Wednesday may forever be known as the day I prayed to the Zoom gods and thanked them for their infinite wisdom of knowing that sometimes I shouldn’t be seen or heard. There are times that I should simply be a floating picture on the gallery view of work-from-home life, nothing more, nothing less.

I have said for years, and I stand by it, that at times I am not fit for human interaction. This week, I learned that sometimes I am also not fit for Zoom interaction…. and confirmed I couldn’t be a spy. 

Sunshine & Sarcasm,
Lowi & G