My new workspace arrangement has completely transformed my room from a place I rarely used to a place I can’t wait to come home to / spend all evening / all day getting creative / hanging out in.
Ever since Scott helped me set it up, I’ve had these words from a Jean LeLoup song stuck in my head:
Mon lit est un navire
Un atelier où je vais pour l’éternité
…which roughly translates to, “my bed is a ship / a studio where I’m going for eternity.”
I had been doing a project that required more space than my little desk could accommodate, and had brought a whole pile of books / post-it notes / big sheets of paper / pens / my computer out to the dining room table. Several days later, it was really bugging me to have all that clutter in our living space, but I still wanted everything to be accessible… so I decided to move my big table from the garage and into my room.
After trying out several configurations of furniture, Scott suggested I leave BOTH desks in there, move my wine-box bookshelves (which hold all my writing and painting tools in addition to books) next to the main desk, and move the bed under the windows. And there’s still tons of room for yoga in between.
Having two desks means that I can now implement an idea Austin Kleon suggests in his book Steal Like An Artist: keep separate digital and analog desks.
My small desk is plenty big enough for my computer and monitor and various other devices I like to play around with. It’s also the first thing I encounter when walking in the door, so it has naturally become the place where I drop whatever crap I happened to be carrying on my way in… which means I’m less encumbered by Stuff and even more prepared sit down, blissfully undistracted, at the “inner sanctum” analog desk, where no electronics whatsoever are allowed.
The only time I’ll reluctantly occupy the digital desk is when I’m working from home, or when I’m ready to start typing out my ideas. It’s very quickly become the Desk of Last Resort.
But the unexpected bonus of this whole scenario has been the day bed, the only place in the entire house where one can sprawl out in a ray of sunlight in the afternoon. This is my new favorite place to read, write in my journal, or just stare at the ceiling, nested into the pillows. I even took a three-hour nap there in the middle of the day the other day; I hadn’t even realized I needed rest, but I swear there’s something about this room that provides exactly what I need, when I need it.
A bed, a nest, a ship, two desks, a studio… creating space (the noun), creating space (the verb).
Space: the final frontier!
Elizabeth Ü 