NEW SOFTWARE, MORE STORAGE
Monday Nov. 12, 2018
Our environment can stifle or stimulate.
Outdoors and wilderness, streams, mountains and waving fields of grain stimulate me.
Who isn’t invigorated by trips from city to country – any country, any magnificent vista or beach or mountain top or ski slope to commune with nature?
But what about this other environment where we spend days/nights, where we work/play all day every day? What I’m getting to, or getting at, is our physical space we occupy. How it impacts us, how it impacts peace of mind. And how mine was hampering creativity.
I’ve ‘done a fix’.
Some normal. Some a bit peculiar – but absolutely satisfying.
My ‘re-invent home office’ project combined several obviously visible elements and several subtle ones. Re-arranging furniture and installing new equipment (love new computers – kudos to wizard Warren leaping me forward). Connected and synonymous systems at each ‘work station’ of my home office. And a remote though connect one in a different place. A writing place/writing space …
I write every day. I work every day.
My need to better schedule creative time, to separate from work time, from ‘the workplace’, to separate ‘morning rituals and writing time’ from 24/7 tug of home office. I love working from home when the weather is bad and traffic is horrid. I love saving time and stress of commuting. But I don’t love quitting time – because I don’t get to go home like most people. Because I’m already there.
Where do I go when it is time to leave the office? I’m already here/there.
Sure, I can close the office door and move into kitchen/living room/ O can ‘shut it down’. But before work, after work and sometimes ‘during my day’, I need a place to separate myself both physically and mentally from work, from phone, from email. With everything in one place that appears to be a physical problem – which it is, in part, but the larger problem was in my head. I knew the best way to create this separation was to physically move the location of the morning creative window. I have. It isn’t a cabin in the woods or some lofty perch overlooking seascape but it might as well be.
I’m scarcely days into this transformation but I’m feeling energy soar. Hopefully quality of my work will reflect improved quality of head space. It’s just a little cloistered space in what most people would call a walk-in closet, but with a difference. Chair, table, computer (the old desktop has plenty of power and remaining life for anything I need. Between bathroom and bedroom, next to kitchen is perfect.
‘Away from office’ is physical – a few paces away from office but mental separation like a thousand miles. I see myself spending much time in this closet. Mostly between 4:00-6:00AM. Sometimes all morning. Or middle of the night, when the muse shows up.
I have screen for light, hot coffee at hand and my imagination exploring many places from my ‘writing space’ while my head is wherever I want it to be.
We can turn off lights and computer, can close doors.
Wherever we are, our mind is there. Permanently installed software, always. Sometimes to re-boot and sometimes we need to reconfigure, to install an upgrade.
Seems natural, because my brain is software.
