It might seem a silly thing, but we’ve been redoing our office these last few weeks, completely replacing the furniture, and it has me feeling a certain way.
This space my wife and I live in represents a mutual agreement between two people to become independent and live without pretext. It was a Christmas gift we gave ourselves almost a decade ago – the culmination of over two years of meticulous saving for a down payment as we lived, “blessed”, rent free with her parents (and so urgently needed we did it before we were even married). We had every advantage and really only barely managed to get our foot in the door, but we didn’t need much, and it’s been a comfortable arrangement & refuge even and especially in highly uncomfortable times.
Surprise and shock to all: we spend a lot of time on the computer. Too much time. It’s the most important fixture in our home and when we first moved in, we essentially transplanted our basement in-law setup into an office. See, we’d always sat side by side, going all the way back to 2011 when I first moved out here. Turning my head to the left and seeing my partner’s face illuminated in the blue light glow is just one of the constants in my life. Here would be no different, and – not needing much (seeing a theme?) – we basically just plopped it down with Walmart desks and IKEA chairs and forged ahead.
For the last 10 years, the arrangement has stayed pretty much as-is. We’ve upgraded the chairs (IKEA -> Office Max -> Herman Millers) and figurine displays, but the desks, the shelves, the wall decor, and the overall layout of the room has remained as-is since we first moved into this, our first home together. It’s a span of time including many of the busiest years of our adult lives, a blur of wedding dates, new nieces & nephews, major home purchases and repairs, promotions and firings, hospital stays and funerals, and of course the global pandemic (more on this in another post though). The one constant was at the end of it all we’d be tucked away at our shitty little Walmart desks having as much fun as we could (with $1500 PCs, of course).
Of all things to get sentimental about we’re choosing the Atlantic Professional Gaming Desk Pro with Built-in Storage, Metal Accessory Holders and Cable Slots of course, but set that aside for a moment – I have a lot of memories at this thing. Sleepless nights spent raiding in Final Fantasy 14 or Destiny 2, for sure. As well as tender mornings where our previous cat, Sweets, would be parked on it waiting for her belly rubs before I started my workday. After that you’d find her retreating to the hammock between my partner and I, which fit perfectly in the awkward gaps left by the gamer add-ons on the desk. Speaking of which: the cup holder couldn’t spare us at least one ruined PC from a cat-aided spill, but the controller holder fit my Xbox One controller so well that I kept it with the new desk.
We’d use the various parts of the desk so differently too – a look into the room gives you a look at two minds intermingled, but starkly compared. Mine, a perpetual mess of trinkets and hers an organized tangle of heating blanket cords and hand-me-down tech tenderly cared for.
I shared all of these things with my wife and our cat, a chapter written in our lives together, a period of my life I’ll personally always be able to look back on fondly, even though it wasn’t always great or stress-free. We endured those times to make it back to those shitty Walmart desks, next to each other in the one place we call home. I feel so lucky to have spent it the way I did, with my partner.
To wrap this up, I think the arbitrary chapters of our lives tend to have somewhat fuzzy boundaries, usually demarcated by permanent change. Or maybe it’s just that permanent changes make us think about the difference between “now” and “then”, making the gaps seem more apparent. I think it’s probably both at once, but the overall effect is that these “closings” tend to come in waves as we age. What makes this one so poignant is that, as written, if I had to revisit any period of my life from the beginning, it would be this one. I wouldn’t change a thing, I’d live it again, no problem. Maybe a bit less stressed, if I could.
As much as has changed, many things that should, have not, and by both tokens I’d like to go forward into the next chapter a little better equipped and hopefully feel the same way next time I get all nostalgic about particle board.