Bought a new desk the other day. Package arrived today evening on Amazon and I got it assembled and standing in maybe half an hour.
It’s beautiful. Simple yet elegant.
Got this image off the Amazon page where I ordered the desk.
Link’s here if you’re interested. For once, I actually am promoting a product. It’s a really cool desk.
(Also, ignore the blue grid on the image. Don’t know where it came from and don’t know how to get rid of it).
This isn’t even close to what my personal set up looks like. Mine’s got less things, more space.
I like it. It’s the first desk that I’ve bought on my own. Over the years, I’ve used desks and tables that my parents bought for the house and at my college apartment I was stuck with the same desk as all the other residents. There was a lack of personality. By the end of it, my desk would end up cluttered with mini statues and ceramic art and coffee cups and tea cups and books and notebooks. It became a unit of storage and I would settle down on my bed or the couch downstairs to use my laptop, do homework, write stories or whatever else it was that I should’ve wanted to use my desk for.
Because they weren’t my desks.
Don’t get me wrong – they were efficient. They were pretty. But they weren’t me.
A piece of furniture says a lot about a person. It defines not only their space but who they are.
Are they a bookworm who requires several shelves to stock with books? Are they a techie
who needs a large table top for several laptops and desktops and some space underneath for computers? (For those of you who are even more clueless about tech than I: “Computer” does not refer to the screen on which you view things (that is actually a monitor) but rather that giant box connected to the the monitor that acts as the brain and heart of the system.)
Maybe they’re sentimental and need space for picture frames.
Maybe they’re a pack-rat that lets mail pile up for week before going through it and need several drawers to act as an informal filing system (i.e. they blindly dump the letters in).
To be honest, at one point or another I was probably all of the above.
But who am I today?
Simple and elegant (and beautiful). As I type to you now I know I made the right choice. My laptop’s sitting on the top table top, my keyboard on the one below it. I can clearly see my screen without having to hunch over or bend forward. I have enough space for my phone charger to the left and if I wanted, a coffee/tea cup on the right. And a single shelf below holding my mic, headphones, some pens, and the folder containing the current drafts of my latest novel-in-progress. The one I chose to focus on this summer. I can easily unplug my keyboard and switch it with the folder if I wish to use the bottom table top to edit chapters by hand instead.
I can also switched out the keyboard for the mic so I can record some vocals for my songs. Ugh, vocals! Damn, I keep telling myself I’ll do those for “Mirror” and do something else instead. What can I say? Love to procrastinate. But who doesn’t? Very few people. Actually that’s another interesting story… but for another time.
For now, to stay on point, our topic is furniture. More specifically, the tie between furniture and personality.
It’s not just desks. It’s chairs, beds, decorations. What does your room say about you? Your house?
Do you have spinning bar stools because you’re fun and energetic? Do you have plush bean bag chairs cause you’re laid back and at peace with the world? Maybe your wall is cluttered with an impromptu mosaic of self-made paintings, photographs, vacation mementos, certificates and awards, and other random things you thought would look good on your wall because you were trying to tell your life story (like my wall was at my old place) or maybe it holds just the most important pieces of your life in strategically chosen places in groups with an underlying theme to each section of wall (like my wall here)?
Because I found myself.
That’s the reason I waited nineteen-and-a-half years to buy a desk.
