Find out how Aaron unwillingly became a pawn in an office takeover.
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Story created & performed by: Aaron Calafato
Senior Audio Engineer: Ken Wendt
Additional vocals: Cori Birce
Art: Pete Whitehead
Music: thomas j. duke
S3 Episode 3: Take your space - powered by Happy Scribe
Hey, everybody, it's Aaron. I wanted to tell you about a cool collaboration that we're doing with some of the students from the Cleveland Institute of Art.
Now, our resident artist, Pete Whitehead, he teaches some courses there, and he thought it would be a great idea, and so did I, if we gave some of the students real world experience contracting with a client. So what they're going to be doing is they're going to be doing their versions and presenting custom illustrations for next week's episode titled Living the Dream.
Then over the course here of the next week or so, we're going to be picking one of them to feature, and then we're going to contract and pay the student for their work. Make sure next week not only to tune in and listen to the episode, but also so you can see their custom illustration on the podcast tiles wherever you listen to podcasts, and go to 7minutestories.com to get a better view of the art and learn more about the artists there. I thought it was a really cool collaboration.
I want to thank Pete for helping put this together and all the students for their amazing creativity. Check out and you can see the winner next week. Looking forward to it. Now let's get to the intro music.
You're listening to 7 Minute Stories with Aaron Califato. This is season 3. If you want to connect with us or grab some merch, visit us at 7minutestories.com. That's the number 7minutestories.com. This episode take your Space.
I'm getting kicked out of my office, and it's coming from the weirdest source, a holistic wellness practitioner/coach. Let me tell you what's going on.
I have this remote office outside of my home just a few blocks away. It's part of a house, it's a big old house and all of the rooms have been converted into offices, shared space, about 4-6 tenants, and relatively cheap. I just have a room.
Now in my mind, when you have an office like this, in your office, you have your space, you can do what you want to do in your space, but then there are mutual spaces, like the bathroom, the stairwell. When you walk into the house to begin with, what do you call it? The foyer or whatever, like that entry point into the communal space before you get to the different little offices, the hallways, all mutual spaces.
The way I was raised, I've always thought about this, and I don't know if this is what goes on in your mind, but I've always thought, I don't want to take more than I need. Now, that's a whole different philosophical conversation about what is need, and different people have different needs, and there's a lot of big appetites out there.
But I've tried to always just be like, I want to take enough to support myself and my family, time, space, stuff. Once I hit that threshold, I don't need anymore. Because for me, when you start pushing past that boundary, you start infringing on people's space, you start crossing boundaries. And to me, this is like life. It's just people who cross boundaries and other people who try not to cross boundaries. It's people who are service to self and people who are service to others or at least aware of other people.
I noticed some changes happening in the office, and we had a new tenant that just came in, and it's this holistic wellness coach practitioner or whatever. We all have different offices, we all pay the same rent, but I noticed some changes happening.
I didn't mind it at first. When I walked into the office one day, I would go in, and there's music playing now. It's Ravi Shankar. By the way, I love Ravi Shankar, sitar. Awesome.
I'm like, okay, I can get down with some Ravi Shankar. Sets a nice mood. It's not my office, not my thing, but it's probably the holistic medicine person, cool down with Ravi Shankar.
Next day I come in, there's Ravi Shankar, and then there's some incense, kind of intense smell. I don't mind it. I love it. Spent some time in Yellow Springs, Ohio. Love that kind of stuff. Patchouli, it's like an outdoor music festival. I can dig. I like it. Little intense, but that's okay.
We got Ravi Shankar. We got Incense. We got patchouli. Next day I walk in. It's Ravi Shankar, incense, patchouli, and now the lights are dimmed. So now there's an ambiance. I'm thinking like, am I at a resort? This isn't the common area. It's like, okay, that's cool.
Next day I come in, we got incense, we got Ravi Shankar, we got patchouli, we have dimmed lights. And now the regular coffee that was there for everybody has been removed. I bought some of this, by the way, and now we got herbal tea.
I'm a coffee guy. If you like herbal tea, that's great. But now we got herbal tea. We got Ravi Shankar, we got incense. We have patchouli, we have dimmed lights, and it's just changing. By the way, this is our mutual space. Where's my coffee?
Now I start coming in the next day, there's people in the waiting room. So now the entry point into the office has become the holistic practitioners waiting room. People sitting there reading magazines, listening to Ravi Shankar with incense, patchouli, herbal tea, and dim lights. So this is starting to bother me a little bit because it's like, we're all paying the same rate, but now you're taking over the entire office. It gets better.
I go up into the bathroom, all the soaps that were there, normal, regular soaps, like Dial, Safeguard, that kind of stuff that I had, it's been replaced with weird rosemary soap. Where do the other soaps go? Where's the Dial? Not only do the soaps get replaced, there's new all kinds of little roses and more incense and all kinds of pictures on the wall. This is the mutual bathroom. I didn't know I was on an Eckhart Tolle conference. What's happening here?
Now on top of that, by the way, I have clients visiting me from time to time. I had a client come in the other week. He goes into the bathroom. He comes back, he goes, "Hey, love all the stuff here. Why are there urine tests in the bathroom?" We got urine tests.
Next day after that, I walk up the hallway just trying to shake the patchouli off me, the holistic wellness practitioner, coach, whatever, just door is open, and she's given a full body massage to this guy laying naked just with towel across his butt, harry back, oils, incense. She's given this massage for all my clients to see. It's on public display. Don't mind it. Totally respect it. You're crossing into the space.
Now we're just part of this whole holistic medicine practice. Nothing against holistic medicine. My point is, it's this person, it's this individual that doesn't understand boundaries. It's to a point where I can't concentrate now.
She's having conversations that are so loud with the door open, it's coming through my earphones. I got people running up and down the stairs doing urine tests. I'm getting kicked out of my own office.
Here's the deal, I remember being in acting class, and there was this exercise which was—and I had this teacher that we would do this thing where we would say, I take mine—and you would have this motion with your arms. You would say, I take mine. It was to remind you, you need to take your space. Take your space.
But there was a second part to this exercise that I think this lady has forgotten, which is, I give yours. It's I take mine and I give yours. When you have that—and she should know this—you have balance because you're not taking more than you need, and you're being aware and conscious of others. Now there's harmony. You can almost hear the Ravi Shankar. There's peace. There's mutualism. There's understanding.
It's not just completely take over capitalistic domination, ownership, exploitation, colonialization. This all comes from service to self where you take everything and it belongs to you. What a weird thing to come out of a holistic medicine practitioner? I got to change offices. I'm leaving at the end of the week. I take mine.
7 Minute Stories is created and performed by Aaron Califato. Our senior audio engineer is Ken Went. Our resident artist is Pete Whitehead. Original music by TJ Duke.
If you or your company needs help starting a podcast, Erin and Ken's company, Valley View, does just that. Reach out to them at valleyview.fm. Special thanks to our partners at Evergreen Podcasts. I'm Cori Birce. Make sure to tune in next week for another story.
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