Where Should One Work At Home?

The couch? The bed?

More than anything, I dream of a home office. Nothing fancy or extremely large, just a room with a door that closes loudly behind me, a window, a desk and a chair that doesn’t hurt my body too much if I sit in it for a long period of time. Maybe there’s a bookshelf in the corner, full of papers and books and files. Maybe there’s a closet that, when opened, reveals more files and bankers boxes, full of the kinds of papers others seem to accumulate with regluarity. Productivity, already at an alarming low, will skyrocket. I would drink more water and smoke less cigarettes and waste less hours of my life telling the cat she’s pretty and plucking my eyebrows. A home office would solve just about everything.

There are other places in my apartment to work, of course. The couch. The kitchen island. The chair in my room, by the window and the radiator. None of these work for me. And yet, my desk doesn’t really either.

The couch is a soft, slow trap, perfect for thirty minute bursts of email and nothing else. Working on the couch feels like a strange luxury — the kind of behavior reserved for when you called out sick, but really, just wanted a day to not think about work that isn’t a weekend. Usually, the TV is close to the couch, so the temptation to watch all of Parenthood in one sitting while you pay half-attention to whatever it is you thought you’d do is strong.

My desk is three feet from my bed. Something about its visibility makes working feel insufferable. Leisure time and work time blur into a smudgy mess when I work from home. It’s very easy to work for longer than I mean to or want to, stopping only when I realize that nothing I’m doing makes sense anymore. The temptation to sleep is not the problem. I’m a bad napper and not inclined to stealing away during the day to lay down. Sitting on my bed — on top of the duvet, street clothes still on — to read or to stare at my phone for hours feels strange. A bed is for bedtime activities, not lounging. Knowing this, the bed’s presence shouldn’t bother me. But somehow, it still does. Its proximity is the problem.

Working from home dispenses with the blessed disconnect a commute allows, no matter how hellish. Leaving the office means that work is done. Your computer, your notebook, your fussy piles of papers — they all stay. Even if your train ride home is an overcrowded hellscape of waiting on a train platform with a million other commuters, it doesn’t matter. Once you leave the office, the night is yours. You are free until the morning.

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