How the 'humble home office' saved my career

I’ve been seeing a number of updates on Linked In with people posting from their ‘personal spaces’. The gym, their favourite coffeeshop to work from, or their hot desks.

So I summed up the courage to do the same. Here’s mine…. My home ‘office space’. Tiny, right?

It’s not nearly as fancy as the stuff most of you out here post, but hey I am a 9-to-5 worker and I’m pretty content with what life has allowed me to have.

Would you believe me if I told you that this little make-shift space that I put together ever so quickly was perhaps one of the most comfortable workstations I have ever worked in and possibly the best thing to ever happen to my career?

Let me explain why.

The love

For those who know me, know I love being a journalist more than anything. It is not so much what I do, as opposed to being who I am.

?That I get to read extensively, write creatively and publish freely is one of the greatest pleasures in life, in my experience.

From the first day I saw my byline printed in ink and riled up a corrupt, pompous and self-indulgent local politician in my community, I knew I had found what I was meant to do for the rest of my life.

I’ve worked in several newsrooms in my decade-long career and most have them have been exactly what I imagined them to be… well, what the comic books’ Daily Planet and the Daily Bugle led me to believe.

But as I transitioned from print to digital, I found myself spread much thinner in my day-to-day activities.

Behind a desk

Don’t get me wrong. At first, this was amazing! I mean, we no longer had to wait till we were printed in order to break a kickass story – ?it was out there the moment we were done writing and it was subbed.

But it required longer lengths of time behind a desk.

Now, while I adored my former colleagues at my old newsroom, the environment left a lot to be desired. A majority of newsroom setups in the country have really not been updated since the late 80s. It’s the same crumbling furniture, and gloomy devices that were just there to churn out copy. ?

We had to make do with run-of-mill coffee that people have often said tasted like dashed dreams, and it was a fight for that one seemingly (most) ergonomic office chair that the said late 80s had to offer.

The quest for the ideal room temperature also sparked a daily debate as people insisted their version of it was the most accurate.

And there were times where I just kept falling ill and the doctor eventually told me… there’s probably traces of black mold in your environment.

Remote working was seen as too idealistic at the time and was written off.

The pain...

Soon my days were preoccupied with the pains of the commute, and the annoyances of the above, and so I spent less and less of myself in my writings and more trying to bear this environment.

Eventually, my writing started to suffer and soon enough after my dad died and I couldn’t find the joy in journalism – or life in general anymore - I left.

Months past, till an old colleague of mine called me up and asked me if I wanted to join her team. Her tech website sprung up and was suddenly doing really well and she needed another writer to help keep the momentum going.

“Sure thing,” I told her. “I’ll report to work on Monday. Just send me the address.”

“Oh no, I’m just going to send you a laptop – no address. You’ll work from home,” she told me.

I wasn’t entirely new to remote work.

When Covid hit, our lives were opened up to the welcomed option of working from home. It seemed like a dream at first! But it didn’t take us long to realize that working off the dining room table just wasn’t going to cut it.

?What it meant was that our home and work lives became melted together and it was hard to disengage from one to focus on the other.

Carved-out space

It was then that I realised I needed to somehow find myself a carved-out space, one ?that would be work and work only – and also kind of disconnected from the rest of my home space.

Going from room to room, I found an otherwise discarded space between a cupboard and the wall in the guest room. Initially, I was confused as to why the cupboard didn’t stretch all the way to the end. But hey, I figured I’d still use it as storage space and shoved a large suitcase and my dad’s old wheelchair into it, along with other bits and pieces of ?‘I-don’t-know-where-to-put-this" items.

This was the answer though. This was the space. It was kind of not part of ?the greater purpose of rest of my home and not a space I’d go into frequently, so it was this space I would reclaim and give a new identity. The office identity.

After clearing all that out and putting all the old stuff in storage, I added a broad shelf (to create the desk surface) and ordered an office chair from Decofurn (something the 21st century had to offer).

Equipped with only a star-screwdriver and an instruction sheet with only images and no actual instructions, it of course took me forever to figure out how to assemble it. But I’m glad to reportI eventually got it. I must say, the back support is amazeballs.

Feels legit

Borrowing a large screen from my cousin’s grown-up son and fishing out the desk accessories I had at my old desk in the office, I placed them in a way to make new little office actually feel like an office.

Then there’s The Marilyn (a canvas print of Marilyn Monroe that I received as a gift from my old colleagues at my very first newsroom and one I’ve aptly named ‘The Marilyn') which I restored with fabric paints and glue after it started to deteriorate over the years, and hung above the screen. This needed to be there! It’s a part of my old team I always wanted to carry with me to every newsroom.

It all came together so beautifully and I absolutely love my new work space. It makes me want to work.

Now, the moment I wake up, more than ever, I just want to write. I want to sit here in my pjs on this amazing chair (that I know no one is going to pinch if they arrived earlier than me) and stare at this big screen and read up on all the news events I possibly could before I start to write. And write and write.

If it gets too cold, I switch on my heater, and if I don’t feel cold anymore, I simply switch it off. I’m comfortable. And being comfortable allows your focus to be drawn to the things that really matter… like the Google scandal in Italy and the repo rate predictions.

My writer-mojo is back too and now I feel worth my ink (figuratively speaking). I love what I do again. ?