Plagued by Productivity
Wedged in the middle seat with an hour of the flight remaining, I’ve finished reading my book and am too unfocused to work. Opening my laptop seems futile. I have neither the elbow room nor the brain space to properly produce. And yet, I’m a compulsive worker. My decade of underemployment spent first as a graduate student, then as a post-doc, and finally, as an imposter syndrome–riddled adjunct had infused a shame-based, borderline pathological obsession with productivity. If I’m not getting intellectual labor done, I’m itchy to get something done—my fitness logged, my closet cleaned, some item crossed off the Sisyphean life admin list. It is this warped perception of productivity that motivates me to use my captivity in seat 27B as an opportunity to digitally declutter.
I open my phone and begin to KonMari cryptic contacts that fail to bring joy and barely bring clarity. The contextual labels I had once deemed helpful identifiers are now blank walls or the gauziest of windows: Arnie Dog Park. Who? Delete. Claudia Coffee Shop. No idea. Delete. Kylene Apartment. The ex of my ex’s roommate circa 2006. Delete.
Paul Neighbor. I’m stopped cold.
In 2014, I drove three back-to-back, seventeen-hour days from California to Connecticut in a dilapidated Toyota Corolla—“the beater with a heater”—for a nine-month stint intended to keep the flickering potential of my faltering academic career alive. The position provided a paltry wage with access to healthcare. More importantly, it invoked perceived legitimacy. Post-Doctoral Researcher was a title, in tandem with university letterhead, from which I could cast my net. Having spent the prior year slinging sixty-five unsuccessful academic applications into the inky abyss, this position was a professional lifeline. Career stability was on the horizon; I just had to keep paddling. Doggedly.
I moved into a split-level share house, forced to sign a one-year lease for a nine-month gig. Mild-mannered Paul, his mini-poodle, Penny, and his elderly, ailing mother occupied the first floor, while an untidy first-year law student and I occupied the second. The law student unabashedly scattered her life across our collective space. Our floors looked like she had sleepwalked through the house emptying the contents of her backpack. Sundry items—loose change, unopened maxi pads, writing implements, food wrappers, a lone shoe—were strewn from hallway to living room to kitchen. By contrast, my presence was rigidly minimalist. I purchased a mattress (sans bed frame) at a Labor Day sale. The giant plastic storage tub in which I’d schlepped my few belongings cross–country operated as an unappealing armoire. I hung nothing on the walls. Why bother with nesting when the mission was to move on? Our place was a feng shui crime scene.
Weeks into my tenancy, Paul’s mother passed away. Grieving her death and no longer consumed by her care, Paul was grappling with his own overwhelming transition. He began regularly knocking on our door. I’d return from a run armed with the intention to hop right back onto the productivity treadmill to find Paul with Penny in his arms and small talk on his lips. Did I need to borrow his vacuum cleaner? Not right now, thanks for the offer. Did I remember that tomorrow was recycling? I did, but thanks for the reminder. Did I know to take note about the roads; the ice is perilous when they haven’t been graveled? Note taken…with thanks.
He was kind and earnest.
I was polite, if a little removed.
He was lonely.
I was busy.
In the Venn diagram of what little the law student and I had in common, our overlap was workaholism and a shared appreciation for the Oxford comma. She was straight out of undergrad and starting her graduate school journey; I was a decade out of undergrad and desperately trying to wrap up mine. Mostly we were ships in the night, each sailing to and from our various higher education obligations. Seldom home simultaneously, we rarely interacted, and when we did it was by text or email to manage the logistically mundane—utility bills and the like. Hence my surprise late one afternoon to field the one and only phone call I ever received from her.
“Hi?” I answered, more a question than a greeting.
“You need to come back to the house,” she whispered somberly.
“Why? What happened?”
“Paul’s dead.”
“What?!?”
“The cops are here. They have questions for us.”
I returned to the house to find the law student sobbing and shaking amid the chaos in our living room. Two unphased police officers were walking through the house, notepads in hand. Despite my shock at the gravity of our circumstances, I couldn’t help but feel abject embarrassment by the optics of our place. The shared spaces were giving harried, single mom squalor; my floor mattress and plastic tub had newly divorced, dysthymic dad vibes.
“When was the last time you saw Paul?” Officer One queried while Officer Two moseyed in and out of rooms. I watched his black tactical boot step over the law student’s towel.
I wracked my brain. What day was it today? Friday? Had I seen him on Wednesday? Or was it Tuesday? One of our more recent interactions had involved Paul knocking on my door right after I’d come home from the gym. Short on time and patience, I’d pretended I hadn’t heard the knock. I’d turned on the shower rather than answering the door. The memory slams like a bird against a windowpane.
“Tuesday or maybe Wednesday,” was my unconfident reply.
The officer nodded and took the note.
“What happened?” I asked.
“We’re still looking into it,” He said this tightly, and I got the sense that he knew more.
“Where’s Penny?”
“Penny?” The officer repeated.
“The dog. He loved that dog. Where is she?”
The officer squinted at me. “When did you last see or hear the dog?”
“Oh god.” The realization settling in, my voice snagged in my throat. “Probably the same time I last saw Paul.”
“Okay.” His pen scratched against his notepad.
Dazed from the windowpane, the bird flaps limply against the cage of my ribs. “It was suicide, wasn’t it?”
The officer blinked, confirmation passing across his face like a cloud.
I don’t remember a single thing that I researched or wrote during that post-doc. I do remember walking every morning past Paul’s boots in the mudroom, his coat on the coatrack.
Now on the plane, I stare at his name on my phone. When is it appropriate to delete the dead? I can’t bring myself to do it. He remains in my contacts like the boots and the coat. My session of digital decluttering has lost its productive edge. I close my phone and sit in stillness for the remainder of the flight, giving Paul the space now that I had been too shortsighted to give him then.
