discovery

it's funny. ever since i started on trying to fix my brain a few years ago i have these random moments of revelation. while skiing i realised that my absolute terror of falling/slipping stemmed from the time i was bushwalking in the blue gum forest with my parents and slipped on casuarina needles and fell over a cliff. today's revelation relates to desks.

djeli and i have been discussing workspaces in the house because while i'd managed to achieve a setup that was working for me while he was away, the lack of space in our house means that it doesn't work when he's around. he has the whole of the spare room for his workspace while i have to take what i can find, something that isn't at all conducive to sustained work on creative things. so we've been talking about what can be done, given that the loungeroom is public space and so interruptions and laundry happen there, and the bedroom sort of likewise in that if i work on the bed i have to pack everything away entirely every night when he wants to go to bed. i can't work on till i'm ready to go to bed even, plus i find i sleep badly if i'm working on the bed all day because there's no separation of work and rest places and i feel like a slob. but the built-in desk in the bedroom is minute. it's barely wide enough for a laptop, with pretty much no elbow room. its one consolation is that it has a nice little bookshelf above it, where i keep all my music and art books, and it's a space where i can blu-tak up bits and pieces relating to what i'm working on on the wall.

i discovered when i first moved out of home that i don't like staring at a blank wall when i'm working. i like to have either a window or a large space in front of me. in lilyfield i had a room to myself that i hardly ever used for a variety of reasons. part of that was because the desk was too small and the window both too small and too high to see out of when i was at the desk.

now i'm staying with my friend in dundee and have been very taken by her tiny 1940s fold-up desk - you know, one of those ones that have storage space in them and divider-pots for pens and envelopes and things, but the desk part folds up to contain the whole thing so it takes very little room, and have been thinking about how that might be a solution, to have something like that beside the minute desk in the bedroom, so it would take up minimal space and give a little more surface space for when i need to spread out.

ANYWAY, to the point, which is the revelation. i've been wondering for years, without really thinking about it deeply, where this need for space and light in my work area comes from and this morning it just came to me in a flash and i suddenly realised that it's because i *used* to have that! when i was in high school, my mother had the clever idea of extending all the bedrooms in the house by adding bay windows to them. the bay windows in my father's study and my bedroom had desks built into them, so i had a desk that was very nearly the full width of the room, surrounded by large windows on four sides (in front, sides, plus it had a glass roof). the light in the daytime was fantastic and when thinking i could stare out into the beautiful pittosporum tree outside the window and see pictures in the leaves. when i worked there it never occurred to me that i might not want to sit at a desk, that i might want to move to the couch sometimes or otherwise shunt about the house, whereas i seem to have spent all my time since i left home doing (or wanting to do) just that in an effort to find some sort of work area where i could actually work.

the space i was using before djeli came home was the closest i've got to the ideal in the 10 years or so since i left home - we have a double-gateleg dining table that sits in a corner of a large bay-window-like niche in the loungeroom. it's a nice space but not really terribly useful so it tends to get used for drying the laundry because it's close to the kitchen/laundry, near self-contained so it doesn't seem to intrude into the living room, has plenty of light and a heater for the winter. i fold out one side only of the table, so there's still not a vast amount of desk space, but i just love being by the window. it makes concentrating so much easier and enjoyable. so i think there's a lesson learned here. let's just hope i can put it to good use and find a space i can set up properly and get some work done in!