Not A Blog™

You will notice that I missed yesterday and I almost missed today. This was intentional. I wasn’t drunk nor hung over from the New Year (only tired). It was something completely seperate from the holiday but which usurped all my time. Nevertheless, it was much needed, so I’m glad I did it even at the expense of ignoring you, my reader.

I bought a desk this weekend. It was one of those things that I’ve needed for a really long time but never got around to buying because it seemed like a big hassle and I didn’t feel like spending the money. Also, I couldn’t find any desks that I liked. Eventually, however, all the things fell into place: I found a desk that was pretty much what I wanted for not too much, I finally got completely disgusted at me being so incredibly disorganized, and I had a long weekend.

Naturally buying a desk is not simply a matter of buying and then assembling the desk. I knew this before I started—which was part of the reason I kept putting it off. No, me buying a desk consisted of assembling it, rearranging all the furniture in my room for optimal use of space, and tearing down and rebuilding my computer set-up.

When I was in high school I got an art table which worked fine as art tables go. In college I got a laptop which promptly went on the only flat space in my room at the time: my art table. This ensured that I could no longer use the art table for actual art, but this was no longer a concern as I was doing all my art on the computer on the art table. So in a sense I was doing my art on the art table, only by proxy.

Over the years, my computer set-up grew. The laptop was the budding of a vine, spreading peripheral tendrils out across, and around my art table. After a few years, the table became immobile, entwined with dozens of cords and cables for sundry purposes. I could remove the computer by disconnecting the eight or so things attached to it, but the art table was going nowhere. On top of all that, the table was not nearly large enough for the handling of regular day-to-day affairs, and so I ended up with giant piles of paper where the most important stuff would go on top, only to be covered by something even more important a few days later.

Clearly something had to be done.

It took two entire days, but I successfully assembled a desk (and another bookcase—and I still don’t have enough shelf space for all my books), disentangled my art table, and moved almost all of the rest of my furniture around in my room. I don’t know why I did that except that as the desk was put in place, it became clear that I could organize my space to be much more efficient than it was, and so naturally this had to be done.

Now I’m sitting at my new desk, typing in an area which is perhaps 98% entropy-free. It’s a space akin to a command center, if I may be so bold. My four bookcases line the wall behind me, a library accessible simply by swiveling 180 degrees in my executive-style leather chair—itself looking like something in which a James Bond villian would sit. On and around the massive expanse of L-shaped desktop I have—in addition to the trusty PowerBook—a widescreen monitor, digital piano, Wacom tablet, multiple external hard drives, various media players, scan converter, printer, scanner, speakers—a crap-load of support infrastructure to empower my creative abilities. My always-on wireless internet access is showing full signal strength. My Canon GL2 resides nearby. I’m nearly set.

Now I just need some ideas.

-Ted