A Room of One's Own

I’m in my office. It’s new. Well…the desk is new. Nothing else is. The room is an unused parlor/living room (which is a complete misnomer because we’ve never lived in there) filled with the overflow furniture that we don’t have any other place (or use) for.

But now I have a real desk-sized desk. It's not the dining room table or the kitchen table or a tiny “writing” desk that looks like what I imagine Bartleby, the Scrivener used. And it’s not my lap in a closet under the stairs where I sometimes sit on a green polka-dotted, donut-shaped pool float. That is too small for my butt.

It’s an actual room. With an actual desk. And despite the space not being what I would have ever imagined my “office” looking like, it is managing to ingratiate itself by simply being what it is supposed to be. Though, I did do some work to get it there.

But first, how did I end up with this giant piece of furniture for which I had zero available space in my house? Well, it’s a long, sad story that I’m not going to tell. The short version is that three family members died so I could have this desk and now I feel an obligation to the universe to use it well.

I shifted some things around and found space for the desk in the “non-living” room. I wasn’t excited about it because the room is filled with unwanted things and that seems like not a good space to feel interesting or special. The room's most attractive qualities, and the ones that caused me to finally settle there, were availability and windows, so I sucked it up and moved in. I couldn't do a lot to change the room, so I focused on trying to make the desk a real work space. My work space. I began by trying to remember what I kept on my last real desk until I remembered that I effing HATED that job. Instead, I decided to start from scratch.

So just started looking for things around the house that one might put on a desk. First, I started with the basics. Laptop. Legal pad. Pencils. Pencil sharpener. The core tools. Next, I moved my giant stack of Post-It notes…the empty ones and the signed permission slips…and put them in separate drawers. I moved the books I was either currently reading or have already read and regularly refer to and stacked them all in one corner. Finally, I dug up an old lamp, put a bulb in it, and put in in the other corner.

That was the skeleton, now it needed some meat on its bones.

Gradually over the next week or two…usually when I was looking for an excuse not to write…I would wander around the house looking for things to add that would make me feel more interesting and special. This morning, I went all Joanna Gaines on it before I snapped a picture and posted it on Instagram (you can see the original there @emckinnon73). But then as I sat at my desk listening to The Moment with Brian Koppelman (for those interested, it was his interview with Amy Schumer), I realized that it still wasn’t quite mine. So I switched some of the books around because I realized that I don’t need to read Olive Kittridge again and that Brené Brown has more than earned her rightful place here. And this is what it looks like RIGHT NOW.

I thought I could invite people to ask questions about what they saw and I could answer them because I read somewhere that encouraging “an interactive experience” is one way of increasing blog traffic. But then I remembered that I don’t give a harry rat’s ass about blog traffic (big fat lie), except for the people who get what this blog is all about for me. If I did, I wouldn't publish 1600-word, non-sequitur essays just to practice my storytelling skills.

Instead, I took four snapshots of the desk. For each, I will tell you what's in the picture and what each thing means (if anything) to me.

This is the least interesting part. The arm of the couch that I sit on when reading and listening to podcasts. The side of an unused "Home Office Console" (I know) that I'm using for reminders. It currently houses a list of the books I want to read next (you know, next year after I finish Infinite Jest) and things that I don't want to forget while sucked into a creative vortex. I have, incidentally, forgotten (ignored) all of them for three days. Then there is a 16-oz cup of water on a coaster because I try to stay hydrated and nobody is inspired by water rings. Some post-it notes from Brian Koppelman's interview with Chuck Todd, for which I haven't found a use yet. My permission slip for today which says "Permission to try it without a safety net. Love, Me". Earbuds in case I want to walk around while I listen to podcasts. And two candles which are mainly for decoration. They are dusty on top.

Here we have the books. The globe and heavy metal/marble chotsky are just to hold the books in place. They were sitting in the corner looking sad and so I gave them a job. The globe's spinning mechanism is broken and so the world is literally upside down which I think is an excellent metaphor. The gold stand is actually 3 dolphins whose tails are supporting the green marble ball. I know nothing about this item...it's origin or it's purpose...all I know is that I wouldn't want to drop it on my toe. The pencil sharpener is self-explanatory -- except I should say that I have given up on electric pencil sharpeners because they all break and sound like a jackhammer. The poseable figure (with magnetic feet) which sits atop a small tin is just something for me to mess with while procrastinating deep in thought. And the cork that reads "What is your story?" is from a bottle of wine I drank most of in New Orleans after I ran my first marathon.

Laptop -- the central nervous system of this operation. The two bowls are things that I made in the pottery studio at church. One bowl has more stuff for me to mess with -- a plastic yellow dreidel, seashells, a couple of rocks, and some Canadian coins. The other bowl holds a candle -- one I actually do use -- sitting in pea gravel. And finally, the Easy Button which was given to me by someone who knew that I would never use it with sincerity. I mostly use it after negotiating with a teenager. And finally, there is a post-it note with a quote by Susan Sontag that I have been pondering. "Time exists in order that everything doesn't happen all at once...and space exists so that it doesn't all happen to you." I would imagine this will eventually be replaced by some other quote that I wish to ponder, but for now, this spot belongs to Susan.

If the laptop is the central nervous system, the legal pad and pencil are the collective heart and the coffee is the blood. Yes, I know it's 2016, but I still write things out long-hand and then type them into my laptop. I also use the notepad(s) to take notes on ideas that I have for the hundreds of books that I might never write. I never took typing so writing it all down is just as fast. There is also something mystical about the connection between my right hand and my brain as it relates to me processing ideas and transforming them into words on a page. Using a laptop interrupts that connection. I realize that the extra step takes extra time, but it's what works for me so I'm sticking with it. And then there is my copy of Siddartha. This is what I read when I need to take a break from Infinite Jest. Because who doesn't find comfort and clarity in a 65-year-old story -- translated from German into English -- about an Indian man's search for meaning? This is how a crazy person "kicks back".

The only thing not pictured here is my dog, Dash, who is usually sitting on the couch looking out the window. He has the very important job of alerting me to trouble...like a person on the front porch or a tissue blowing down the street. They are problems of equal magnitude to Dash.

And that's the space. Now that I've shared it with you. I am free to go about using it for the good of humanity.