Official Revision Of Self-Improvement Goal 1: Improve My Handwriting

Recently, I had the pleasurable experience of my annual performance review. In it, we reviewed my goals from last year, one of which has always and will always be this: Become more organized/manage time and deadlines better. I explained to my boss my own self-improvement goal: To improve my handwriting. I explained that I worried there were sometimes errors in billing because people have mistaken my sevens for ones, etc. So, I've been working on writing more legibly.

"Oh, don't bother doing that," she said, "Just buy a typewriter!"

So I did. It just arrived on Friday and it's sitting in a box in my office. It is a Smith Corona WordSmith 100 Electornic Typewriter.



I can't wait for an invoice to come in so I can start to tap away on its keys. I'm looking forward to the quaint noises it will make when I turn it on and begin to type. It will be like this: "Hummmm....zap...zap...zap... zap...zap...zap...zap ...zap...zap...zap ...zap...zap...ding! It will growl when I pull the paper out with out undoing the release lever, which I'm sure I'll do. I look forward to lining up the paper correctly so that the WordSmith 100 will type precisly 1.5 millimeters above the lines on the form. And I will treasure my pink or goldenrod copy as legibile evidence of what I ordered for future refence.

I will be reporting on my experience back in time as I type forms. In the mean time, let me leave you with this poem I wrote last March:

Ode on a Requisition Form

--after Keats "Ode on a Grecian Urn

Thou blank, crisp face with blanks to inscribe,

Thou three part NCR form; pink, yellow, white.

I tremble with anticipation and sweat with fear.

Will I complete you correctly? Will you flow through

The twists and turns of approvals and eyes?

Will you become the purchase order I desire?

***

Your fields, unscrutable, I check my codes.

The codes, byzantine and nearly uncrackable.

Is software an office supply? Or does it have its own code?

These answers I cannot divine, only uncover

With the help of the toughest teacher: experience

As you sail back and forth from clerk to clerk.

***

Still, a part of you stays with me, the pink part.

You rest in my file, chronologically side by side

With your brothers in sequential order. I protect you.

I bring out the pale copy of the original that you leave behind

To defend my word and work against those who stand against me

Tyrants in a teacup, holding their rules close to the vest.

***

Woe to the tyrant who questions your authenticity!

For I have copies of quotes and prices!

I've followed those rules I was able to uncover

And I have written them down to pass on to those who come after me.

Oh, yes, tyrant, your empire shall crumble!

Your gates will fall. And work shall be done in half the time!

***

But this requisition shall sustain me. I will sing your number,

Again and again until your metamophosis is complete

Until your items and services are delivered

Until your invoices are paid.

Thou shalt remain in the midst of other records

Boxed, archived, tallied, charted, reported and closed,

And I shall inform my replacement:"Documentation is truth, truth documentation"--that is all

Ye know on earth, and all ye need know.