I was struck by inspiration one evening, just as I was setting up my home office to return to work after a creatively expansive year-long maternity leave. It came in the form of this quote:
Put your desk in the corner, and every time you sit down there to write, remind yourself why it isn’t in the middle of the room. Life isn’t a support-system for art. It’s the other way around.
Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of The Craft
As an accountant with a tendency to be consumed by the profession, I felt there was a parallel to be drawn here. Had I been treating life as a support system for my work?
How backward is that?
Once I realized this, I began the process of trying to peel myself away from the work. My new goal was to make work just important enough to do well while I was working, but also to make space to fully experience the rest of life.
I specifically wanted to make room for creative self-expression, the missing piece that I needed to feel balanced. At some point, what your career needs is not more hours, it’s actually fewer hours of higher quality. I needed the downtime, the fulfilling passion project that was just for me, and the separation from work, so that I could show up at my best on Monday mornings.
I stood there for a few minutes, staring anxiously at my revived workstation, and I could practically feel my free hours closing in on me. This wasn’t going to work, not this time around. I needed to do something big to make a drastic reprioritization in my life.
So I moved my workspace five feet.
Somehow, that’s made all the difference.
Back to Stephen King’s On Writing, His Desk, and My Desk
As I like to say, the physical space you give yourself speaks volumes about the figurative space you give yourself.
In a brief summary of this short section of the book (that admittedly won’t do it justice, because – well, Stephen King wrote it), before he arrived at the advice in the quote from On Writing, Mr. King had a dream. He would conduct his important work of writing on a “massive oak slab that would dominate a room”, which he did procure, and placed in the middle of his spacious study.
Except it wasn’t working for him.
I think what he found was the study became a metaphor for the way in which he was conducting his life. His work took centre stage, and life just happened around it, or in support of it, or in spite of it, exasperated by the enticing image of the wounded artist.
After embracing sobriety, he traded in the domineering desk for a more modest model, and stuck it in the corner of the study. A living room suite replaced the oak desk in the center of the room, where he would spend time with his kids.
Life is for living.
My Version of The Oak Slab
Actually, let’s just talk about my version of the wounded artist for a moment: The Miserable Accountant.
Just like artists must be in anguish to create, for some reason accountants must be burnt out to work. We’re supposed to feel stretched, to be “too busy” for anything, to live or die by our deadlines, to never say “no” to extra work. So of course the work comes first, and of course my workstation was placed prominently in the middle of my creative space, not to be outshone.
Except nowhere in my job description did it ever say these were requirements. Who did, then? I did.
Okay, back to the desk.
I must admit, I have a lovely home office. It was intentional, because when I moved in, I knew two things:
- I’d be working in it.
- I’d be making stuff in it.
Between work-work and creative work, that’s a lot of hours spent in the home office!
I outfitted it with an L-shaped desk that is – yes – practically in the middle of the room. When I originally set it up, I knew I’d be working from home (although I didn’t realize I’d be doing so exclusively for two + years), so I had it in my head that the actual work area would be the most prominent.
My “workstation” is basically just a computer station comprised of a raised laptop, two big clunky black monitors, a mouse, and a keyboard. Their home was prominently in the corner of the desk. They really didn’t fit perfectly in the space due to a hutch on one side that forced them closer to my face, but hey – all the better to see my Excel spreadsheets.
The problem was the desk also housed my hobby projects – paintings in progress, my personal laptop for writing, workbooks, knick-knacks, journals, and so-on, and while I loved to have these things out so that I could just pick them up on the fly, there simply wasn’t enough room, so they had to get tucked away at the end of a session.
To be fair, I took inspiration from Marie Kondo’s The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up, and created a ritual of “closing out the day” by pushing the workstation components away in the corner and along the wall-side of the desk when the work day was done (if it was going to be done that day). Even in their tucked-away position, they were still obvious, encroaching, and always beckoning me to “pop on for a few extra hours”.
A Magical Maternity Leave
The workstation was removed entirely during my second maternity leave, and what a breath of fresh air that was! It felt so wonderful – so liberating – to have the space back to being just a creative space. My latest painting projects could live and breathe out in the open. Any digital writing being done was done just for me, on my little personal laptop. I even took advantage of my time on maternity leave and worked through Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way, and decorated my space with the tasks from it.
At the end of that leave, I was filled with dread as my big, clunky monitors eclipsed the signed and dated Agreement with the Creative Force on the wall of my hutch.
I stood there, staring at the imposing black of my workstation, and then it came to me:
Put your desk in the corner of the room.
Except it wasn’t my art that needed a priority shift – it was my work.
Every time you sit down there to work, remind yourself why it isn’t in the middle of the room.
It was the encouragement I needed to really dedicate myself to a positive shift towards more balance.
Stephen King said, “life isn’t a support-system for art. It’s the other way around.” I think the same can be said for any work that you feel passionately about. Even accounting. (Yes, you can feel passionately about accounting. Ask me how!)
Fortunately, my office has a perfectly modest, unassuming corner in it, and that was precisely where my workstation needed to be.
I got to work immediately, identifying things that could go, or move, or get repurposed, and in just one evening of frantic upheaval, that corner housed a small desk with just enough space to accommodate my workstation. In fact, the fit was so perfect that it was practically meant to be there.
Creative space reclaimed!
Trying to Multitask Your Creative Life and Work Life Doesn’t Work
A couple posts ago I talked about the Creative Cubicle, which was essentially an injection of creativity into an otherwise bland workspace which helped inspire creative thinking and cultivate authenticity.
Up until this point, my day job had always taken priority, so I thought sprinklinking little bits of my creative practice in and around it – like a melding of the two worlds – would somehow help me feel more balanced and productive in both areas, but it turned out that at home, the opposite was true.
That is, the Creative Cubicle did not translate to the home office.
Trying to Be Creative Without Prioritizing It
What I didn’t say in that Cubicle post (because it had only occurred to me in hindsight) was that the Creative Cubicle was probably a quiet reclamation of an identity outside of my career. Specifically, it was a bubbling over of creative expression – that’s probably why I instantly identified with the concept of the border collie mind so well. I had spent so many years prioritizing my career over creative pursuits that by the time I realized I needed to pay attention to them, I didn’t know how! I lacked direction.
Was I a musician? A writer? An artist? Something new entirely? I still don’t know, but I don’t think it matters – the point is just to make time for your creativity, and then actively engage in it.
Before I had figured that out, I think I was actively trying to embrace my creative side without prioritizing it. What does that look like? Basically, exerting a ton of effort into creative work-projects or areas of specialization, increasing your personal stake, taking on more responsibility, and just generally having more involvement – it sounds great if you’re passionate about what you’re doing, and I was, but if you’re an employee, you still have to play by the rules, navigate around the red tape, add value according to someone else’s perspective, and inevitably, do things someone else’s way (at least from time to time).
Bringing creativity into your work as an employee can certainly make the job feel more fulfilling and exciting, but it doesn’t satisfy the part of you that wants true creative freedom: the absolute autonomy over what you’re creating that helps you hone in on your creative voice, your interests, what you stand for, and so on. I think that to some degree, most of us need a safe space to be creative in an unfiltered and authentic way, and to have full ownership over it.
Unfortunately, in most cases the workplace just isn’t it!
You need to find another dedicated space, at least figuratively, and probably literally as well.
Multi-Tasking Work and Creative Life
I was able to bring my work life to my home office, but the concept of the Creative Cubicle just didn’t translate the same way it used to:
I felt distracted. I think it’s because I knew I was at home and within arm’s reach of my hobby tools. Rather than being motivating, the creative bits in my space just reminded me of how I’d rather be making stuff – my own stuff – but I had to finish the work day first.
It muddied the waters. One idea I had was to keep my bullet journal open by my desk so that if I took a break or had a moment of downtime, I’d be ready to doodle, jot down ideas, and so-on.
It didn’t work.
First of all, I have no idea how people doodle while listening to a presentation or discussion. I’ve seen people doodling away while still asking questions and otherwise engaging in the discussions going on. How!? The second I start drawing my mind is immediately transported into to the page. Were we having a meeting?
Second, with the creative idea receptacle ready and open beside me, my mind was sort-of primed for work and for play, and was efficient at neither.
You’d think you could compartmentalize a bit by sticking to schedule, but no, this didn’t work either. Let’s say I planned to spend thirty minutes of my lunch break drawing. It’s hard to initially get started (because work doesn’t sleep and there’s always things going on). Then once I’m in it, I’m in it, and it’s a struggle to stop that inertia and get back to work once the time is up.
Okay, why not extend your lunch break and give yourself an hour, then?
Even if that’s fine with your employer, adding that time in the middle of the work day just… extends the work day. After a day like this, I don’t think the mind feels satisfied having squeezed an hour of art in – it just feels like it had a very long work day. Is that just me?
Then there’s just the general ongoing tension from the tug-of-war that was feeling irritated while working (because I wanted to be making stuff), and feeling guilty while making stuff (because my work computer was right there, reminding me of all the work I could be doing). For a true 9-to-5, I suppose that might not be such a big deal, but many of us have the type of job where overtime occurs naturally because there’s always something to do.
So my efforts to balance the books and the creative life turned out to just be a type of multitasking on a grand scale. This was unproductive, and unfulfilling.
My solution was to create separation and focus at the task at hand. When you’re working, really work, and when you’re creating, really create.
For me, that meant giving myself the space to create – figuratively and physically!
My New Setup and Newfound Balance
It’s been a little while now in my new setup, and I have to say – it’s so much better.
My workstation is in the corner of my office on a desk that is just the right size to fit it, and no bigger. The fit was so perfect that it feels more spacious, even though it’s on a smaller desk. Go figure.
The corner of my office is no-flash, all-function. It’s close to my window but not facing it, making it well-lit but non-distracting. The walls in that corner are bare (save for a print of a black cat named Mickey who watches me work). The setup is simple and effective – there’s no distraction. It actually feels a lot like my current in-office workstation setup, and I love that continuity for efficiency’s sake (and for getting in to the right mindset to work when at home).
Perhaps the best part: the workstation itself is non-intrusive. When I am at the L-shaped desk making stuff, it’s actually aesthetically pleasing to look at, if I even bother to do so. It’s very easy to tune out while I’m over here, possibly because in addition to the workstation, the desk and chair are also black, and it just becomes one blur, like a shadow of the work week.
It is infinitely easier to focus on work when I’m working, and my projects when I’m not. Now, it could be that I’ve also just developed some mental fortitude and healthy boundaries, but I could have sworn the physical separation helped dramatically improve the mental separation.
In doing so, I’ve reclaimed extra creative time that I’d never previously had when I was working. In addition to the mental separation, I think it’s the ability to leave various supplies, projects, and reminders out, which encourage me to come over here and make stuff after the work day is done, even when time is short – just add one wash of colour, I hear, or come jot that idea real quick, it was a good one! (To be determined.)
I finally feel like I’m doing it – I really am balancing the books and the creative life.
I think I’ve even shook off that “busy accountant” stereotype. Case in point: I went to a new hairdresser during busy season this year, and half way through, he says (and I’m paraphrasing): This might be a weird thing to say, but you’re the happiest accountant I’ve ever met.
🙂
I’m not going to say it’s all the desk, but it’s not not the desk.
Let the journey unfold!
[Update: Blogging-me is laughing at herself at the end of this post because in writing a “series” I intended to produce a larger number of shorter posts and that has absolutely not happened. Oh well!]
