Office Space; or Maybe, Finally...

Having a dedicated place to work on my writing has always sounded like a Fine And Wonderful Thing to me. In my house-buying fantasies, there would always be the perfect little nook that I could turn into A Writing Space Of My Very Own, with a big ol' wooden desk and a big comfy desk chair and inspiring pictures on the wall and a stereo -- or at least, a boom box -- where I could play music. In a really ideal world, the place would come with windows I could open in order to hear the babbling of a nearby stream, or the wind soughing through pine boughs.

Then we bought our house. It was built in 1961 and is very ... square. Four rooms on the ground floor. Four rooms upstairs. Unfinished basement. Sadly, no nooks of any kind, really.

So we started allocating rooms. There are five bedrooms in the house. The downstairs one is being allocated to bookcases and a daybed for occasional guest use, while its closets will be used to store games and, um, our Lego collection. Upstairs, we have an obvious master bedroom, check. Another room, one with two closets, we decided to dedicate to storage of our SCA and other costumes and accessories. There'll be bookcases in there, too, for storage of historical reference books. A fourth room is obviously "the guest room" -- there's about room for a bedroom set in there and that's it. Which leaves one room to be my cozy writing nook ... except Beloved Husband wants office/computer desk space, too.

Sigh.

Obviously, compromise has to happen sometimes. So I (reluctantly) agreed that I would share the space with him. It will be a tight fit, but I decided that we could make it work. (Yes, I'm still a little pouty about it. But I'll get over it.)

And then we moved into the house and started The Endless Painting Project. (We were at least smart enough to do the Long But Not Nearly So Endless Floor-Sanding-And-Refinishing Project before we moved in.) So here we are, more than two years after "moving in," still camped out in the guest room and the dining room, with most of our stuff still in storage.

But now, at last, at looooooong last, the end is within reach, at least for two of the five rooms we're still painting. The SCA room just needs touch-up paint on the new baseboards and quarter rounds we put down, to cover the nail holes. And the Office only needs a final coat of paint on the smutch I got on the ceiling when painting the walls, and a last check to make sure the nail holes in the new quarter-round are all covered there.

I'm thinking I can finish that up in about half an hour on Saturday morning. And then...and then...

I want to move into my new writing space.

It may not be exactly what I wanted. But I do have the big wooden desk, ready and waiting (a legacy from the house's former owner). I have a reasonably comfy chair (donated by friends who were moving and didn't have room for it). The walls are a soothing green color, and I have curtains that should match nicely. I have inspirational pictures all picked out for my side of the room. Thanks to modern technology, I don't even need that boom box anymore, just a pair of speakers to plug into my computer so I can play music from our shared network drive. There's even a door that opens out onto a lovely, tree-shaded deck.

But best of all ... if I open the windows, I can hear the waterfall babbling into the fish pond below. And the wind soughs very nicely through the enormous pine trees just outside.

I can hardly wait.