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….or, loosely translated, Amy’s Procrastinating.

I’ve seen a lot of posts about workspaces lately, which got me thinking about mine. I never give it much thought, truth be told: I just comes in and sits down, and the rest of what happens is hopefully something you can see on the shelves one fine day. (or read about here, of course.)

So I never really think about my workspace as being important: it isn’t uncomfortable or distracting, so it must be doing its job. But then we moved not two months ago, and I was standing in the middle of the amazing pile of debris that is the result of going from 800 square feet in the country to 690 square feet in the city, and kind of panicking because I was never really all that sure about this apartment and I’d never lived with other people all around me and traffic outside the windows, and our couch didn’t fit up the stairs and oh-gods was this a bad idea? And it was way too late for second thoughts.

Well, having moved a bit more that the average American (7th move in as many years) I know what a girl should do. You pick the room that always feels most like home, and that one gets unpacked, decorated, and arranged come hell or high water, and all the rest can go to hell for a few days. For me it’s always the kitchen. I’m not really sure why – I like to cook and all, but I’m not exactly in there 24/7: I suppose it’s some holdover from generations of family gatherings. We may not exactly cook gourmet, but we cook big, and leftovers are pushed on guests as aggressively as religious pamphlets at the airport. So I guess it makes a sort of sense that I would go for that. Once the kitchen is set, anywhere can feel like home to me.

Well, this time, as I was standing there in the approximately one square foot of floor space left in the living room, wringing my hands and trying not to snap at my husband or pull my hair out, I went for my workspace – my husband, probably seeing that I was in danger of imploding, generously let me have the 2nd bedroom for an office. In an hour I had my desk hooked up, decorated, booked, blessed, be-candled, and hung with all manner of pretty dangly things. And the obligatory bowl of chocolate, of course, just for looks. And I felt perfectly fine once that was done, in spite of the lamented couch, the loud traffic, the missing soap for my badly-needed shower, and the fact that I couldn’t find the coffee maker.

 Here it is:

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Looking at this, I realize I tend to surround myself with little reminders of what makes me write: pictures of the refugee kids I worked with in college; of my sibs, who, bless them, certainly provided me with plenty of material; of my husband, who may not have the slightest interest in fantasy but will listen to me babble about my characters for an hour without looking more than a little weary; of college friends; of family. The books that inspired me the most are somehow the ones that made it to the shelf next to my desk. The bells top left are fung shui for creativity; the little black sachet hanging over the monitor was blessed by a priest/priestess pair from 4 moves ago for drive and inspiration, a golden calcite spear for focus sits in front of the monitor, a yellow jasper ball paperweight for health and good spirits, a rose quartz lamp…

Needless to say, I apparently like a lot of color and light around me.

This is the first time I’ve been able to really achieve that anywhere we’ve lived in the last seven years, and I can say, with no modesty whatsoever, that I’ve done my best work to date at this desk.

So what do you need/want to have at your workspace to make it happen?