Simple. Basic. Productive.

This is what my home office looked like before:

I’m a neatnik, so it wasn’t horrible. Still, it felt really cluttered to me, and the desk, while arguably handsome, was really not ergonomically correct. I was forever slamming the chair into the side of the desk while trying to find a comfortable position, and the chair itself was prone to dramatically falling apart while I was sitting in it. I really wanted a standup desk. (If you haven’t already heard me prosthelytize about this ad infinitum, here’s why.)

I spent months doing research into standup desks and obsessing about it to the extent that I probably lost a few bored friends and followers. I got a lot of advice about the best standup desk options, most of which involved a desk with an electronic or manual lever that would allow it to raise up and lower down whenever I wanted to change position. The key to a standup desk, by the way, is being able to sit down when you want to. It’s not the Gulag.

But I wanted something more simple than that, with less parts. And I found it in the desk that Tinkering Monkey, a two-very-cool-person company in Oakland, makes to order. 

But first, I had to completely dismantle my home office (really just a small corner of my tiny cottage) and repaint the wall. I had an unfortunate vision a few years ago that a deep green-gray would be a great color to stare at all day. I make terrible decisions.

So, there was some painting. Not something that puts me in the best mood.  But I got through it. 

What I really wanted was to paint this wall silver. Doesn’t that sound sweet? Unfortunately, the paint store people took one look at me and said “You could never pull that off. You’d need a professional.” I gave up. Grouchily. And settled for this pale putty. At least it’s a step up from the mud-color. 

A long weekend of mild tempter tantrums peppered with brief moments of productivity later, and here we are.

And now it’s Monday morning and I am settling in to my first day of work at the standup desk. So far it has not been a disappointment. As long as I don’t turn my head and look over there, where I stacked all the riffraff that I now have no place to store, because my new desk won’t stand for clutter:

Never mind. Don’t look at that. It’s not even there.