I’m a desk person but I don’t want to be a desk person because I don’t move enough and I always seem to be sore and tired. I’ve got a window that looks out onto the parking lot, and it’s always too hot or too cold. In the lunchroom, people heat up frozen dinners and chat about how much they hate the Prime MInister, and I say it doesn’t matter because in sixty years wherever we are will be too hot, or too wet, or too much of both, and the melting ice caps will probably release some ancient illness that makes our organs bleed, but no one wants to hear about that so I eat at my desk with an action figure of Captain Picard. I keep him there because I like his vibe, which is somewhat aloof but also, you know he wants the best for you, and I think some of my coworkers think my action figure is stupid, but I think they are stupid so there is some consolation. The truth is, I think the future in Star Trek looks nice (let’s be clear, I am talking about TNG). I’d like to fast forward through all of this: the day job, the shit politics, and the weird weather. It feels like we are at the end of an era and I’m not sure another one comes after. I don’t have anyone to talk to, but if I were on the Enterprise, I could talk to Counsellor Troi, and she could help me make sense of the things I am feeling, because she could feel them too. I like to imagine that one day, my life will become an episode of Star Trek. Captain Picard will come to me because I’m important to the plot. It will be a time travel scenario, they’ve got an episode like that, and he’ll ask me if I want to come to the future and go to space and join Starfleet (no entrance exam, because I’m special), and I’ll say yes, because why on earth would I say no? He’ll ask if I want to be a red shirt, and I’ll have to clarify if he is referring to the original series or his series, because I don’t want to come all the way to space only to be killed off by some alien or multidimensional being to advance their plot, and he will laugh and take me to ten forward, where Guinan will give me excellent advice, but suddenly, I’m feeling like my own plot is too much to carry. Maybe I can be one of those characters you see every few episodes who don’t die but are also not the main players, they are the ones who walk by, very busy with their own important space work and I’ll spend all of my free time on the holodeck, I’ll bring Captain Picard and Guinan, and we’ll drink Earl Grey tea on his vineyard in France, and they’ll be my space dad and my space mom and we’ll look up at the stars and be light years away from everything.