When I started my freelancing, it was a rush to make money and pay bills that I was behind on. I was also somewhat depressed about losing the comfort of my previous job, and still trying to absorb what freelancing was like and the faith that I could make it work. Well, now I'm completely over that lull and work is good, but I was stuck behind a desk I couldn't stand, using an old desktop PC with cables everywhere on it, and every time my wife said, take your stuff and let's go, it would take me an hour to get everything copied over. Desktop PCs also have a lot of cable clutter. Now, many people think that desktop PCs are better than laptops for programming, but what they're thinking of is the fact that many people probably don't backup their laptops, and others don't think the keyboard can handle all the constant pounding. However, if you backup your laptop, and if most of the time you use an attached keyboard and monitor with your laptop, it tends to work out just fine.
So, my wife and I came up with a plan to move me into a larger room in the house, pull everything out of it, and to stick some brand new office furniture inside and with a brand new laptop.
Our first stop was Office Max. There, you end up spending $1000 for a big desk and a file cabinet to go behind you. Plus, it's made from particle board and has like a resell value after a couple years of perhaps just $200, if you're lucky. So, my wife said that wasn't a good deal.
We then traveled to every kind of major name brand furniture store in the USA, and not a single one had anything but tiny hutches or traditional-style desks for a home office. If you were wanting something more modern and European, you can pretty much give up on most stores. Eventually, however, we landed at Room Store. Now this place finally had what we wanted. We decided we could get a low, thinnish, European-styled dining room table and a dining room server, and turn them into a large desk and file cabinet. And at Room Store, it was just the ticket because we paid a mere $1000 for it. We then ended up with something that has a far higher resale value -- we could probably resell it for the same cost because we purchased it at a bargain. The wood is a much better construction -- it's black walnut veneer on paulownia wood (which grows fast in China and is about as hard as oak but lighter than pine). And it's a matte finish because a shine is extremely distracting (and cheesy). This came with a dining room server that made an outstanding file cabinet.
In particular we went with the Kathy Ireland Bay Heights Home Dining set, but only with the dining room table and the server, not the chairs or anything else. It makes a fantastic desk set.
When you combine this with the new Acer Extensia laptop for $500, a separate keyboard and flat-panel LCD, you end up with something that has less cords and looks elegant.
Next, I eliminated all paper. I refuse to use sticky notes or let anyone put any paper on my desk. Everything either goes into a simple manila folder on my desk, or on the pad of paper, or in a drawer in my new file cabinet.
The room I put all this in is a room with a humongous dormer in the front of my house over the foyer. It looks out at a forest and my good-looking front yard. If the sun gets too bad, I can always close the shades.
So in a sense, this is fantastic justice. I have no commute, have a modern-looking office fit for a wealthy lawyer, complete with elegant furniture and a window, have a very large desk all to myself, have a powerful laptop, and no one can tell me what software I can or cannot put on my laptop or make bad business decisions that I completely disagree with. I am the man in charge now.
Anyway, with this out of the way, it's helping me focus on my work and not about moving junk around on my desk.
No comments:
Post a Comment