Shh…I’ve been keeping a big secret for at least a week now. Okay, I know the blog has been fairly quiet in general for a while, but that’s because I haven’t quite worked out the art of daily blogging with the art of daily living especially when so much is happening in the living department. So, I’m opening the door a crack, so you can see what’s been going on in the living department lately.
I have a space of my own. No, not a house, but an office. An office outside the home. And, not just a table at the local café or bookstore. I have a real office with my name on the door, a desk and phone, privacy and access to a conference room where I can teach. Yes, its true I’ve had a home office for years – one with frequent interruptions by family members, needy pets, and household chores. I’ve claimed a table at Books-a-Million and made friends with the baristas there, but none of these places have been private or mine.
For years friends and fellow writers have encouraged me to find a proverbial room of my own and I have smiled and nodding, knowing I should do so, but not knowing how to make it happen. Last month, my uncle told my father about some office space available in a small business incubator location. My father told me and the rest is history. I am still a bit shell-shocked. It seems to good to be true and it is such a powerful thing; something perhaps not easily appreciated by those to whom space has come easily. I have had little to call mine. Aside from a bedroom and a small home office, the closest I have ever gotten to space of my own was a single dorm room my sophomore year of college. One with such paper-thin walls that I could hear my best friend watching Oprah in the next room and we could gossip simply by sitting close to the wall and chatting.
I love my family, I love my friends. I even have enjoyed the company of the other lost souls setting up makeshift workspace in first Borders and then Books-a-Million’s café, but having a workspace to call mine is so novel, so different, I am having a hard time believing it. I moved in last week: hung my photographs and diplomas on the wall, watched the sun set a brilliant shade of red over the parking lot, purchased tulips the lightest shade of lavender and placed them in a vase in my window. I set up my printer on my own and even hung the Biography and Memoirs sign that I purchased when Borders was going out of business right above my bookshelf above a picture of me showing Alfie. The Borders table I bought at the same closeout has found a home in my new space as well.
Now, that I’ve told you about it, perhaps it will seem a bit more real, though I think it will take some time for it to truly sit in. I find myself rushing through interviews and appointments just to get a chance to work in my new space, room 226B.
