The Pulse We Were

Sometimes I close my eyes and go back to 2019. The monitor was no longer a CRT, but the coffee was still just as bad, with that recycled cardboard taste that reminds you where you are.

We were different back then, before the world paused—and what a pause it was! There was a particular energy in that third-floor office, an optimism that seeped through the Venetian blinds. The smell of permanent whiteboard marker, the kind Pedro used for his famous flowcharts that 90% of the team didn't understand but we all applauded. The tap-tap-tap of thirty keyboards like an artificial rain, the squeak of Carlos's chair that he never wanted to oil because he said it was "his personal signature."

It's Friday, but "my body knows it!" Veronica would shout every Thursday, just to see us roll our eyes and laugh. Her reports, always in yellow folders because "yellow is the color of success." Sophia with her endless laughter, Paloma and her legendary jokes at every meeting, like when she said Mondays should come with a snooze button while Juan watered the plants with the same dedication he showed in keeping track of the month's numbers.

Well… we were that kind of dysfunctional family that only exists in workspaces, united by impossible deadlines and shared dreams.

The glow of my screen illuminates Post-it notes with motivational quotes that I don't even read anymore. It's six o'clock and I'm still here, staring at an Excel spreadsheet that seems to be repeating itself. There's something hypnotic about the hum of the air conditioner, about how the office devours souls and spits out reports.

My father had a similar position, middle management, they called it. I remember his worn briefcase, his sighs over his machine-made coffee. He talked to me about "climbing the ladder" while his blood pressure climbed.

I also remember when I coordinated my first important meeting. Time dragged on as I thought about all the versions of leadership we've been sold: inspiring bosses, wise mentors, innovative disruptors. I was just trying to make the projector work.

The fluorescent light flickers. I close Microsoft Teams, and my workstation is left in the shadows. In the bathroom mirror, my face is that of someone who discovered that the real KPI was the laughter we shared along the way.

I remember that March morning. It was the last time we were all together in the boardroom. The projector whirred as we discussed plans that would never come to fruition. Fluorescent lights cast shadows on presentations that now seem like relics of another world.

The coffee cooled in personalized cups, which were later left abandoned in cabinets. In the windows, our reflections blended with the sunset, unaware that we were witnessing the end of an era. And what was it…

Today, four years later, every time I pass by that building, the office lights tell a different story. In the reflection of the glass, I see ghosts of who we were, of what we thought we would be, of a time that now only lives on in memory.