Why I Love My “Corner Office”
An ode to my home work space, all 25 square feet of it
I live in New York City, in a two-bedroom apartment, with my wife, Didi, my two children, A.J. and Oscar, and our cats, Mouse (my kids have an overdeveloped sense of irony) and Batman (he looks like a bat). If you ask a real-estate agent, the total area of our home is 1,100 square feet. If you use an actual measuring tape, that number is more like 900. Never mind a home office, we don’t even have room for a respectable “cloffice.”
On the first day of Covid lockdown, when my wife sat down at our kitchen table with her laptop, I retreated to a chair in a corner of our bedroom where I like to read. We didn’t really think about it or talk about it. That’s just where we went.
That was four years ago, give or take. I have been working in that same spot ever since. And I love it.
Would you like a tour of the place? There’s the chair, a modern white-leather affair with a matching ottoman, both of which double as feline scratching posts, and the corner, the northwest corner, to be precise. The whole setup takes up about 25 square feet. End of tour.
Would you like to hear about my deluxe office accessories? They are: a repurposed West Elm wooden nightstand with asymmetric cutouts, a silver floor lamp whose provenance has been lost to history, and a white, fuzzy Ugg “lap poof” that my wife got as work swag that I now use to prop up my laptop so my neck only hurts a lot instead of a tremendous amount. The nightstand is just big enough to hold a pen, a small journal, and a pad of yellow sticky notes (the little ones). The lamp has a device you can use to adjust it without burning yourself that I can never seem to remember to use. The white Ugg pillow can’t go in the washing machine. It’s more like a brown Ugg pillow now.
I call the place my “corner office.” Somehow the dad joke suits it.
Want to see her? Here she is:
I am well aware that working from home isn’t an option for everyone, and I’m grateful for the opportunity. I am a so-called knowledge worker, meaning I type words into a laptop all day and have Zoom meetings. That’s pretty much it. I am not a doctor, nurse, schoolteacher, police officer, firefighter, plumber or anyone else who needs to be physically present to do their job. Medium is a fully remote workplace. (I’m on the content team here.) After lockdown, the company gave up our office space and never went back. To do my job, I don’t have to “be” anywhere. In any case, there’s no place for me to be.
Many people who work at home trick out their workspaces with standing desks, ergonomically correct chairs, high-tech headphones and microphones, and ring lights. I have nothing against any of that, I just haven’t done it. Maybe I’m in denial. (Pandemic? What pandemic?) Maybe I’m lazy. Or cheap. That last excuse doesn’t even make sense. Medium offers a stipend to help defray home-office costs.
What I do know is, my corner office works, despite its simplicity. Or maybe it works because of that. There’s something about its Spartan nature, its aggressive lack of things, that helps me focus. With no pencil holder, stapler, or desk phone — hell, no desk — there are blissfully few distractions. It’s just me, my chair, and my laptop. Strange as it may sound, that motivates me. It feels like us against the world.
As anyone who has ever read a newspaper trend story knows by now, remote work keeps you from wasting time commuting and going out for coffees and lunches, which can drain productivity. And although I miss seeing my colleagues in person, the pandemic has taught me that I am something of a closet introvert. I was never unhappy in social settings, and I’m still not. I like coffees and lunches as much as the next person. But I’ve found I like being alone more than I thought I did. For me, it’s at once calming and energizing. Working at home, I can control the balance between social me and private me more to my liking.
I’ve gotten a lot done in my crazy little bubble. I’ve participated in countless Zooms. I have conducted Medium interviews like this one and this one. I have written Medium blog posts like this one and this one. I wrote a freelance essay about loud whistling for the New York Times magazine and an Op-Ed about living through the pandemic as an immunocompromised person for the Washington Post. (The benefits of working from home for someone who needs to avoid infections more than most people are obvious.) Could I have done all of that in a traditional office? Yes, but that’s not the point. The point is, I did it at home, in my corner office.
Now and then, if my wife is out of town or just out of the apartment, I’ll use her spot at the dining room table to have a meeting or do some writing. Her setup isn’t fancy, but it’s nicer than mine. The light is better. She has a proper laptop stand. There’s an attractive painting you can use as a backdrop for video calls.
My wife, being a fair-minded person, has offered to trade places with me. It’s a lovely gesture, and I appreciate it.
As I type this, it is exactly four years and fifteen days since lockdown started. I have yet to take her up on the offer.
