On crafting a home office, TBR here.
Then, the office away from the office. While I spend no time shuttling a pair of daughters around, I do step in, every once in a while, as a grandfather-esque figure for a fishing buddy. Good fun for me.
Kids make great bait.
Seriously.
However, at least once every other week, I try to take myself out and work elsewhere, usually a coffee shop. I tried a local TexMex dive, and that didn’t work well, as the music was too loud in the afternoon. The crew was rocking out to Tejano while cleaning. I enjoyed the tunes, but no, the blasting conjunto and Tejano was too much for my tastes. Food was good, coffee fresh, but background din was too loud — for me.
Over the last few years, after graduating from a trailer park in South Austin, my arrangements are ever-changing, but the stand-up desk is now fairly constant.
For short jaunts, fishing trips, and dashing to Austin, the goal is less, not more — just an i–tablet works well enough.
There’s a new mechanical keyboard available, and while that looked really appealing, I found the price too high.
Something’s not right with my priorities? $500 for a fishing pole I use maybe a half-dozen times a year, or $100 for a keyboard I use daily?
The well-crafted home-office needs a fat pipeline (internet access), and the correct devices for accessing that inter-web, then, there should be the proper array of technical items, be that laptop, notebook, or whatever, used to interact with the various data streams.
So far, I’ve done exactly one reading at my kitchen table — in this place — at my current residence. Seemed like the thing to do, and it worked, after a fashion, but I’ll opt for the living room most of the time. I do so very few readings at home, though. Mostly from the phone, and mostly in the home-office.
As secondary notation, the home office should have ready access to coffee. Owing to roots in a trailer park, for a spell, I opted for an arrangement where my office was in the kitchen (area) of the downtown space.
Three paces to coffee. Nice. However, I value solitude for work, preferring a lonely space for writing, farther from the kitchen — and coffee — but more isolated. Fewer distractions.
It’s a spare bedroom with books, lots of books, all kinds of books lining the shelves. Cult fiction, pulp in book form, highbrow literary, a number of Shakespeare references, and the list goes on. Grammar and writing guides, too. Chicago Manual of Style, I think. Or AP?
Part of the deal, some years ago, I moved to a special, zen–like, “In/Out” box. One stack for everything. In-bound mail and out–bound correspondence, all in one place. As it turns out, started out as a joke, but so far? It seems to be a much more productive way to handle such materials.
As noted elsewhere, I also streamlined a bit by getting rid of a futon.
I still have an iPad hanging off to one side as a spare monitor, but really, just used for keeping track of details I don’t want to confuse me.
I did upgrade to a newer Apple Keyboard and Magic Trackpad. In my ideal setup? A goal for this next year? I’d have a wider monitor.
