Hi hello. Going to move us along here because the real starch of this issue is down in the Bureaucratic Minutiae, and I don’t want to slow you down too much. Though, now that I write that, I wonder how much more satisfying it could be for you if I split each issue into nine different pieces and hid them in different places, or sent them to different groups of subscribers. Perhaps a memory would hit way harder if it took you a few months to find it it, or it would feel more special to attend events whose details you had to uncover. Yes, perhaps I shall email the events to some of you, the photos others, and the captions to yet more different groups…

—Iván

→ Up Next

• Already passed, but Madeleine’s Creative Writing Workshop would have been this past Monday, the ColoRadio Meetup was this past Tuesday, and Weekly Wednesday Worknight was last night.
• Glint: Sense is this coming Tuesday, September 15. Hear from Joshua, Kalini, Beth, Maia, and me. We’ve still got spots left, so reply if you’re interested in telling.
• For the ninth year in a row (!), Livvy and I will be hosting Summery, our story- and reflection-driven end-of-summer picture show, in which we convince our friends to show us pictures of their summer and tell us what they mean. It’s always on the last day of summer, which this year is September 22, and it’s one of our very favorite traditions. Hear (and see) 11 9-and-a-half-minute-long presentations from Morgan, me, Livvy, Michelle, Allyson, Lauren T., Mark, Madeleine, Christof, Jim, and Dan (and maybe Jaime).
• Mary Ann’s Book Club is reading The Compound by Aisling Rawle for the next bookclub on September 28.
• On October 10 (exactly one month away!), Sylvia and Erin are hosting This Too Shall Future: A Salon Soirée. Described as “a creative gathering to dive deeply into matters of the heart and mind”, it’ll be a time of sharing ideas and making a collaborative art.

← August 30–September 5

Nostalgia

Do you remember the tiny Ted Lasso watch party? How much darker the walk was?

Or the workday with Malika? Our puzzling over a better portmanteau? The improvement from sleepgry to slumpy? How we had s’mores after our late lunch? That Malika and Livvy insisted on using the air fryer instead of just eating them cold, and Madeleine appreciated it? The short walk over to the convenience store?

The book club with talk of games and metrics? How you considered oblique strategies?

The recess walk to Little Man? How we admired the cloud?

Or The Empowerment Manual book club in the park? How we talked about conflict, and making user manual zines, and got bit, while sunset tinged the tops of the trees?

Do you remember the big Worknight? How we met Mark, Nicole, and Helen?

Or the very big Thursday afternoon after a very small morning? Our parade to the spice shop?

The Friday with our brief stop-in with Livvy’s parents?

And do you remember the PowerPoint Party that had to do with the biological, fashion, concert-going, scientific, physical, and caring feats of women? That we also learned about socializing, career advice, chopsticks, and movement?

Bureaucratic Minutiae

• In honor of how deeply buried the final half-fork was, it seemed worth really surfacing the lede of this issue, though the lack of mention or explanation about it until this late may in effect be just as unhelpful as having buried it. In any case: you may remember, in issue 3.5, a plea for the return of our wanderings forks, or in issue 3.7, Patrick’s game of hidden forks, a gift which we would have liked to inspect in the mouth but couldn’t finish the finding of. Well, it had been almost two months since the last fork had been found, and, per Patrick’s communication, that last fork only counted as a half fork. In all that time there had been no progress in finding the remaining half fork, until Saturday afternoon, when a very confused Will texted Livvy and me saying “I found this thing in the bag of rice you gave me. It’s a mini fork that says, “wow!!!”. I have so many questions.” It seems that Will was the unwitting final player in Patrick’s months-long game, the result of his being the only person interested in taking Patrick’s left-behind bag of rice, within which had been buried the final and tiniest fork. (Which, for the Torah-literate among us, is very much giving “Joseph testing his brothers”.)
• The newfangled secure microwave door feature, which had thwarted many an easy reheated food retrieval by requiring the unintuitive press of an unlock button, has been disabled, thanks to a tip from Alex. The microwave door can now be opened just as easily as the microwave doors of yore. The very recently laminated sticky notes describing the operation of the previous secure version have been archived.
• Mary Ann’s Book Club rated The Score 3.4.
• At Worknight: Helen completed the impressive task of reaching inbox zero; Ivan and Madeleine worked on the Hell House rough cut; Lauren T. journaled for 25 minutes; Mark G. prepared for his sunset session and an upcoming meeting; Mark II worked on a scratch board illustration; Nicole worked on the layout of her garden; Ryan re-architected his home lab network stack; Joe sculpted hot dogs and hamburgers in Blender; Livvy worked on adding photographs; and MAB readied the Ridwell recycling. Writeup by Ryan
• At PowerPoint Party: Micah presented a part two to his menopause talk, Mark gave a moving presentation, Amanda encouraged us to talk big, Elijah told us about the final (?) utensil, Livvy’s mom told us about Livvy’s early fashions, Gaby took us along on her Bad Bunny concert, Joel gave us questionable advice, Lauren T. told us a slightly more heartwarming story of a woman in STEM, Jim told us about the great Lynn Hill, and Allyson told us the story of how the lesbians got moved up in the acronym.

• Attendance data for August

  We have a time clock. Partially because, hey, we’re a Company! And mostly because we love having a physical record of (almost) everyone who’s been in the space. People punch in and out when they visit. At the end of each month, we stack up all the cards by visit count in the Fibonacci sequence. Here’s the data for August 2026:

  1 visit: 55 people
  2 visits: 10 people
  3–4 visits: 8 people
  5–7 visits: 3 people
  8–12 visits: 2 people
  13–20 visits: 3 people
  21+ visits: 2 people

  Total people: 83
  People who came more than once: 28

  Other notes:

  • Exactly one more person visited in August (83) than July (82).
  • Thank you to everyone in the 5+ column and the 8+ column for color-coordinating, respectively. A similar thank you to most of the people who only came to Glint.
  • Jessica S., so close to 21+. 🥲
  • At the beginning of the month, Earl posted a photo of a coffee shop in NYC that has a punch clock. We noted the artsy-ness of how people wrote their names. Thank you to Adam and everyone else who stepped up their name-games this month.
  • The “Misc.” sub-column in the 1s included visitors to: The Creative Writing Workshop and Mary Ann’s Book Club: The Score.
  • Inevitably: incomplete and messy data.
  • Special note: After exactly 2 years of these monthly Punch Card Physical Histograms™️, I’ve decided that this will be the final photo. Of course, we will continue to use the punch clock as always, and other art will likely emerge out of these artifacts. Thank you for being audience to my little art project over all this time. ♥️ —Livvy

• Finally, a reminder that The Company is a member-supported gathering place. If you’d like to pop in for a workday and you know one of us, reach out to schedule a time and we can let you in for free. If we don’t know you yet, reach out so we can get to know you, or come by an event and say hi.

Photos

—

Paperwork is the official corporate communication of The Company, an indie, member-supported gathering place run by Iván, Livvy, and Norton. This issue of Paperwork was written by Iván with additional reporting by Ryan and Livvy, and was shot by Iván and Mary Ann. Photo selection and editing by Iván, Livvy, and Jessica S. Editorial support was provided by Livvy. This issue, and The Company itself, was made possible by the support of our members, Halie, Drew J., Justin, Mason, José, Mary Ann, Trevr, Allyson, Lizzie, Elijah, Michelle, Jim, Jacob, Mark, Sabrina, Beth, Dani, Chris, Will, Sarah, Alex, Jessica P., Jessica S., Ben, Sam Ad., Christof, Ryan, Lauren T., Madeleine, Simon, Adam, Gus, Lauren S., Earl, Bennett, Sylvia, Morgan, Joe, and Case; and our Junior Associates, Asher and Vivian.

Feel free to forward. Everyone loves Paperwork.

😘