transforming my office
This is my birthday gift from my dad. It's still a work in progress, as you can see, but already I sense how it will alter and expand my space in this lovely little room.
When I first moved into my office, just over a year ago, I loved the blankness of the space, the empty walls, the echoing newness. I wanted to spend time in the room before building anything permanent into it -- to see where the light fell, to see what was really missing or necessary.
I set up my wheelie computer desk, which I've been writing on since grad school, c. 1997; my chair; a plastic office organizer with drawers, formerly Kevin's; my great-aunt Alice's tiny rocking chair (she was a tiny woman); and a cast-off cupboard with doors, inside which I hid my piles of paper. After we got dogs this summer, the dog beds somehow migrated here too. The dogs love the heated floor and finding retreat from the constant attention of the children. (The children know to knock.)
It didn't take long, really, for the blankness to be replaced by clutter.
And darned if I could no longer blame the clutter on other people -- for the first time since about 1999, I had a space that was all mine. Which meant the mess was all mine too. The room began to seem small. Piles of books teetered atop stacks of paper. Soccer cleats took up residence on a windowsill. Framed artwork was stacked in the corner, facing the wall. Behind the doors of the cast-off cupboard, items became so crowded and sprawled as to be basically unfindable.
I couldn't afford built-in shelves and desk, but thought maybe I could put my GG finalist earnings ($1000) toward Ikea shelves and a desk. And then my dad got wind of my plan. Before he became a professor of Anabaptist history, he seriously considered apprenticing as a carpenter instead. He used to make our Christmas gifts out of wood when we were kids. Now he's retired. He's got a wood-working studio in his garage. So he volunteered to take on the job of Carrie's office.
I've been working in here for the first few days of this new year, still using the old wheelie desk, c. 1997, but with the architecture of the shelves in front of me, giving my eye some relief from the blank wall. I've been writing steadily. For my birthday, I bought myself Scrivener -- no longer a trial version. This promises to be a big book. I'm not sure how big, but it seems quite big already and it's not done yet. Oh, and it's a novel. I've also started believing my character is a real historical figure, which is weird. I'm making her up but I feel like she really lived.
I'm imagining a hibernating winter with these shelves warm with books and pictures, the dogs in their beds, the clutter temporarily wrangled and contained. I imagine a filled space, and the comfortable march of words. I'll be writing.Labels: house, office, organizing, parent, The Girl Runner, work, writing