Clearing Desks

Among my most valued possessions over the years has been My Space.  I shared a room with a brother, then a roommate assigned by the University, but come medical school I had a solo apartment.  My car became a reality for the second half of medical school.  Not only did it get me to where I needed to go and sometimes wanted to go, but I could be by myself, even if halted in traffic amid a thousand other vehicles.  Marriage meant sharing living space again, but the front seat of my car could and did remain a sanctuary most of the time.

Amid the house and car, workspace was sometimes the best definition of mine and nobody else's.  Not exactly though.  The University and my landlords each provided me a desk, often too small a top surface.  My father built a long table in the basement for study and homework.  I disliked the fluorescent lighting and did the written homework at the dining room table.  However, I measured one-third the length of the basement table, marked mine with masking tape, installed a bulletin board next to that third, and kept my supplies there.  A better chair would have helped.  Residency meant no desk at work, a shared surface at home which I did not particularly find inviting, even though I chose the final desk myself and still have it in nearly pristine condition forty years later.  My first job provided me a somewhat battered metal model with a stationary chair and overhead fluorescent lighting but the office had a door and some storage though also the features of a converted patient room.  It was my retreat, maybe the first one I ever made an effort to personalize with doodads that pharmaceutical representatives used to give away.  And I worked there, logging flow sheets for lab results each morning, writing my admission and progress notes, using the telephone, deciding what goes in the drawers.  Fellowship returned me to the shared work surface and fluorescents.  Private office meant freedom to personalize and I did.  Massive wooden desk from a corporate clearance event, shelves, credenza and my splurge, the best desk chair I ever had, chose by me.  Employment for my final eight years got me a utilitarian pressboard desk and a comfortably but slightly battered swivel chair.

At home I made my own workspaces, two of them.  One a 3x6 foot tabletop straddled over two off-white metallic low file cabinets purchased from Conran's.  This was to be My Space, and it still is though the desk surface is a little higher than optimal.  At a corporate surplus sale I got a garish green swivel chair, a shade that probably would not sell well at a paint store, with slightly chipped metallic base and vinyl arms.  Not great visual appeal but the ultimate in comfort.  I added a bankers light and a rhinolin writing surface.  My Space, almost.  Like other desks I have had, my quest for surface area has proven insatiable.  Books held by stylish bookends to the right, a B&W 9" portable TV from a yard sale to the left, eventually retired when the FCC made analog televisions unwatchable.  School supplies go on sale each August so the far left corner has a stack of loose leaf paper and spiral notebooks far in excess of what I can ever use.  Loose leafs go on sale too, and I got some good ones kept in my line of sight.  There is a good wooden storage box with nothing in it just to the right of the rhinolin pad.  Drawers have remained mostly empty.

Since the study could really not be a personal space if it housed the family desktop computer, I declared another space as mine,  Our living room has a reasonably defined corner nook which I filled with a secretarial drop down desk.  K-Mart had a suitable wooden swivel chair.  Journals filled the surface though with some effort I can still close the drop-down portion to expose a pleasant carved design.

So now I have nominal My Space, usable about half the time when I get motivated to creating surface.  Even when not usable, with a stereo upstairs and an electric massager on the chair downstairs, the chair makes the destination.  The surface will get protected in due time.