A Change Is As Good…

Devastated to announce that I’ve successfully taken advice.

My workspace will probably never look like this.

Honestly, I’d be scared to breathe, much less do any work.

Having said that, I have fallen into the worst possible trap of working from home: working from bed. Not all the time, but increasingly. And it’s not… great.

A couple of years ago, in the Time That Shall Not Be Named, I didn’t actually have a choice but to work from bed. I was in lockdown with a furloughed partner, living and working in a 20sqm studio flat with no doors to separate us except the one to the bathroom — and I wasn’t quite cruel enough to make him sit in there for eight hours a day while I worked.

But now we’re not in that position. Now, we have a separate bedroom and living room (luxury!) and I even have a desk. Admittedly, that desk is occupied by a gaming PC and therefore there is no room for my work laptop, but I regularly move my monitor to accommodate my loom so really, I’m making excuses.

The thing is, it’s so easy to open my laptop and check emails before I’ve actually made it out of bed. And then it’s easy to stay there, especially with nice AI-generated backgrounds for meetings so no one else has to know I’ve got a nice shirt on but also my duvet is up to my hips.

The thing is, I’ve noticed recently that I’ve had a bit of lethargy. I don’t think it’s impacted my day job really, because that pays my bills and therefore I give it all my energy. It’s more that… after work, I therefore have no energy. Which is a problem when you’ve got a book to write. And a social life to see to. And dinner to cook.

I had a quick Google, to see what I could do, and I found a bunch of well-meaning but largely unhelpful articles like this one from teambuilding.com that told me to meet up with colleagues in person (I do), vary my day to day tasks (not up to me) and “set up your space for maximum happiness” (impossible, I’m British). But there is one piece of advice that I am devastated to announce… works. Change your scenery.

So I’m currently working in the living room, on the sofa, with my feet up on a computer chair and my laptop on a lap tray. And I am gutted about this, because my mood has lifted, I’ve done a load of washing between meetings so I’m clearly more energised and motivated, and I’ve even remembered to check up on a project I’d half-forgotten.

Also, I re-developed the opening chapter of my horror novel last night, because I had the brain space to do it.

And all I had to do was get out of bed. Like I said, devastated.