Step One

The study. A metaphor for where I want to be spending my time, as contrasted with how I’m currently spending my time. I want to be in the study, working on my work – writing, researching, planning yoga classes, studying. So, as Step One of The Plan, Chris helped me pick out colors for repainting the room – green and green, pistachio and stem. (Yes, yes, that is a quasi-Steel Magnolias reference.) I’m also going to put up a 6 foot square section of cork tiles on the wall. Perfect for posting up my planning, research, budgeting, and dreaming progress. If I keep it all in my head, I’m afraid it will stay there, stuck, and never get back out. So I’m externalizing! I’m painting, I’m cork-tiling, I’m posting things right up there in plain view on the wall for all to see!

Let’s contrast this with my last two workspaces…

• Workspace, the Former: In a beautiful building in the Clarksville neighborhood downtown, my office was high-ceilinged, lovely of view, moss green in color. But ah, what horrors that lovely space held – such dysfunction, such petty grievances, so many bang-my-head-on-the-desk moments. When I took the job, I think I believed that good things would happen simply based on how durn purty it was. For a brief time – and along a similar line of thinking - I also believed that I would enjoy working with my boss: he was funny and compassionate and what more could I need? Oh, I dunno, maybe competency? One of the personality quizzes Kathy put me through asks, “Do you prefer a boss who is more sympathetic, or one who is more efficient?” Before that job, I would’ve gone with sympathy; after, efficiency all the way.
• Workspace, the Current: Gray, gray, gray. The walls are gray, the carpet’s gray, the lighting is highly, brain-suckingly fluorescent and turns us all shades of gray to match the rest of the interior. Most days I have an office, though I get booted a couple times per week if someone more important needs the space. This makes seeing patients interesting – I have to beg around for an empty room and hope I don’t get booted again in the middle of the visit. I think when I took this job, I believed that it had to be better than the last one, since the office looked so ugly. What logic! Also showcasing my analytical prowess, I believed that since I didn’t like my new boss from the get-go, she must be efficient. Sympathy/Efficiency? – answer, efficiency. Unfortunately, I grow ever more convinced she is both unsympathetic and incompetent. Siggghhh.

You can see the need for my very own, very pistachio-and-stem study. It’s lovely. There’s a ficus tree in the corner, and I can look out the window over our front deck. Sometimes, there are cows in the adjoining pasture. Always, there are cats in my lap.