Indulgence
I've been trying to put a finger on what it is about my office that so enlivens me.
There is the separation, the feeling that "yes, I have other roles and responsibilities, but I don't (and indeed usually can't) do them here. Here, I'm a writer." There is the courting of the muse with reliability and routine. There are practical things like the good light and good chair and the distraction-free space. (No Wi-Fi! I recommend this.)
But a part of it is harder to touch. It is powerful to have a space just for oneself, and to furnish it not with an eye for practicality, but purely for joy. I mean, yeah, I need a desk and desk chair. But everything else in here is something I've chosen for comfort or beauty or some emotional resonance. The glass bird I fiddle with when my hands are restless. The brass bowl with the cloisonné butterflies where I put my keys. The wall with the icon and the map of Tenochtitlan and the porcelain birds that were my great grandmother's and the bundle of dried grass from the hill by the monastery where I wrote my first book and the back cover of a magazine from 1942 advertising the Waterman "Commando" fountain pen ($5). It is almost a poem made physical, and walked into, every day.
There is the separation, the feeling that "yes, I have other roles and responsibilities, but I don't (and indeed usually can't) do them here. Here, I'm a writer." There is the courting of the muse with reliability and routine. There are practical things like the good light and good chair and the distraction-free space. (No Wi-Fi! I recommend this.)
But a part of it is harder to touch. It is powerful to have a space just for oneself, and to furnish it not with an eye for practicality, but purely for joy. I mean, yeah, I need a desk and desk chair. But everything else in here is something I've chosen for comfort or beauty or some emotional resonance. The glass bird I fiddle with when my hands are restless. The brass bowl with the cloisonné butterflies where I put my keys. The wall with the icon and the map of Tenochtitlan and the porcelain birds that were my great grandmother's and the bundle of dried grass from the hill by the monastery where I wrote my first book and the back cover of a magazine from 1942 advertising the Waterman "Commando" fountain pen ($5). It is almost a poem made physical, and walked into, every day.