I’ve been spending more time than I expected watching our little flock of chickens in the backyard. They don’t do that much, which is probably the point. They eat, drink, wander and peck, they clean their feathers, take dust baths, make their small running commentary, then they head up to roost. You can sit there and feel like you’ve seen the whole range of them as creatures. There isn’t some hidden layer you’re missing. They are exactly what they appear to be, and that turns out to be incredibly satisfying to watch.
It scratches the same part of my brain as people watching, but without the part that wears you out. There’s no trying to read between the lines or decode a look or wonder what someone meant by what they didn’t say. With people, there are so many signals happening at once and most of them are ambiguous.
Sitting out there, I realized part of the appeal is that the chickens don’t really ask anything of me. I don’t have to respond or interpret. I can just observe something that makes sense in its own simple way.
And then I come back to Cohere, where people are anything but simple. If you’ve been working from home for a long time, that first stretch of membership can feel like more work than expected. You’re not just finding a desk, you’re re-learning how to be around other people during your day. There’s a bit of scanning the room, a bit of second-guessing, and wondering where you fit.
What I’ve come to appreciate is how quickly people settle in. People have patterns, even if they don’t realize it yet. They tend to arrive around the same time, gravitate toward the same spots, take breaks in similar ways. You start to recognize it without trying so the room organizes itself, and you can find your place inside of it.
It never becomes as straightforward as a flock of chickens, and that’s part of the value. But it does become familiar in a way that makes the day feel easier, and a lot less like something you have to figure out from scratch every time you walk in.
In case you’re wondering, here are our chickens names: Pecky, Becky, Dottie, Henleigh, Pepper, Sugar and Barbie.
Love,
Angel