A room of one's own

On the value of changes of scenery, she-shed fantasies, and boundaries.

Friends, I wrote most of the below before the situation in Ukraine became what it is. Finishing this piece functioned as a retreat from the fear and sadness that I felt every time I looked at the phone this weekend. I felt I couldn’t send this out an essay meditating on my frivolous needs and anxieties without some acknowledgment of the nightmare unfolding in Europe. Saying prayers today for peace and for democracy and for the staggering courage of the Ukrainian people.

I’m currently plant-sitting for some dear friends who are spending a few weeks elsewhere. While hydrating their greenery technically requires nothing more than a weekly 15 minute visit to douse their greenery, I have taken full advantage of having a set of keys to a home that is not my own; a few times a week, I have walked the mile to their sunny house and set up my laptop at their dining room table. It is a delight to work in a space that is not my house. Perhaps it is all the greenery, but the change of scenery makes me feel more oxygenated, more alert. Surrounded by my friends’ artwork and sipping water from their glasses, I am relieved of the responsibility of moving the laundry from the washer to the dryer, doing the lunch dishes, and making eye contact with the puppy who pleads with me to play with him. With the exception of a few days I spent in the office over the summer, it is the first time I have worked from somewhere other than my desk in the living room in over a year.

I have recently become fixated on the idea of having a separate space - be it for work or for writing or for watching Love is Blind after Ben goes to sleep. In my fantasies, this separate space usually takes the form of an ADU¹ - a remodeled shed or in-law unit - in the yard of our next house. In popular jargon, this sort of retreat has become known as a “she-shed,” a feminized version of a man cave. I have leaned into this feminized fantasy. I dream out outfitting this shed with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves on every wall, an electric kettle, my children’s artwork, a couch for naps draped with colorful batik quilts. In the shed, my desk will room for a keyboard, a notebook, and a cup of coffee at the same time. The shed will alleviate my stress about having houseguests and mitigate my fears about having children; as I stand on the precipice of marriage and family life, it has become the physical manifestation of my desire to maintain a non-wife and non-mother identity.

My therapist kindly reminds that an ADU may not be the answer to my problems, that part of my ongoing challenge is setting and keeping boundaries, prioritizing writing even without the benefit of a physical space to do it in.

She may have a point. But so did Virginia Woolf, in A Room of One’s Own. So did Georgia O’Keefe, when she set up my platonic ideal of an artist’s house and studio in Abiquiu, 53 miles outside of Santa Fe, and days away from anywhere else. And coming and going from another space these last few weeks helped compartmentalize my preparations and stress for a big work thing. Just knowing I had somewhere else to go if I wanted to write and the conditions at home weren’t suitable reduced my constant low-lying angst about not having the time or space to write at home.

After shrugging off the thought of home ownership for years, it feeling out of reach and low priority compared to all of my other obligations and desires, my sudden ravenous appetite for space has me perusing Zillow listings on my phone when I wake up, during conference calls, on the toilet, on the couch. It hasn’t yet reached the level of obsession—I don’t think about these homes when I am not looking at them—but for the first time in my life I can almost sort of understand the temptation of the house with a finished basement thirty miles outside of a city to urbane cultured young professionals who are otherwise confined to passing Zoom meetings wedged into a corner between a baby stroller and the most recent stack of Amazon deliveries.

It has taken two years of working from home during a pandemic for me to uncover this buried longing for the now lost-ritual of having a place to go to that is dedicated to and designed for productivity and thinking, a place that lacks the distractions of home life and the temptation of a nap of the couch. It wasn’t until I had this separate space to work that I fully realized how much I resented the desk in the corner of the living room, and my inability to fully leave behind the trappings of home when I am working and the trappings of work when I am home.

What I miss about the office isn’t so much the social — remote work has brought my coworkers and I even close together, and working next to Ben means I have someone to share memes and snacks and rage with throughout the day. What I miss instead are the physical trappings of the office and their emotional counterparts—the spacious desk and shelves, the ability to shut the door and visually signal that I am not to be disturbed. I miss deciding that the day is over and exhaling as I walk out of the office, with my laptop in the overstuffed tote bag in which it will live until the following morning. I miss the flicker of excitement that came from wearing a new outfit for the first time, for catching a glimpse of myself in the bathroom mirror and seeing a reflection of myself in the world rather than flecks of toothpaste I should scrub off.

I recently read the third installation of Deborah Levy’s autobiographical trilogy Real Estate. Following a divorce in middle-age, Levy has installed herself in an apartment that is not the home that she craves; it doesn’t fit her, physically or emotionally. She is in awe of other people’s homes and their objects. She longs for a sort of house that would better reflect and contain her, and even as such real estate remains far out of reach, she adds homes to her fantasy portfolio of what she calls “unreal estate.”

In writing this, I realize the limited powers of my imagination. Even Levy, for whom a single parent’s writing income makes a new home out of reach, is able to rent a writing shed in someone’s back garden—a home of any size not being a suitable place to make art. I am imagining one separate space with multiple uses—work, writing, privacy and a closed door when we have houseguests. I can’t even dare to dream for two separate spaces—one for work, and one for writing—and the freedom to come and go as I please between them and home and the world.

Perhaps it is this freedom that is key. The option to be in one place or another is what girds against the sensation of being trapped. The irony is that when I worked in an office, I longed for days that allowed me to leave the dull, private cloister of fluorescent lighting, sad plants, and Microsoft operating systems. Particularly when I was single, I loved days that sent me into the world, where I could hover in the sunshine and see and be seen. When I was a legal assistant in New York, one frequent errand involved picking up records from the appellate courthouse at 27 Madison Avenue. No one kept track of my whereabouts on these days, and after picking up the sealed manila envelopes, I would stroll across Madison Square Park to the then newly-opened flagship Eataly to buy myself an imported hazelnut chocolate before sauntering the three miles down Broadway back to Wall Street. Once I started practicing law, court hearings provided a similar excuse to dip a toe into the world—to commute in a different direction, to wear a suit and heels and grab a cappuccino from a new coffeeshop, to meander indirectly back to the office.

Since my job is based in Los Angeles, there is no chance of me commuting to an office any time soon. While I am more often than not grateful for the ability to be permanently remotely, the reality has started to sink in that, I need to find a way—figuratively if not literally—to close the doors between work and home, between work and writing, between myself and world. I think it has been a blessing for many of office workers who are now able to work from home to be able to spend more time at home and have more time and flexibility to address the demands of home life. But the thought of continuing to exist in this tangled blur of identities and obligations feels unsustainable to. Perhaps my therapist is correct that even if I had a door to close, it would be on me to enforce the boundary of the door. But that hasn’t stopped me from going to open houses and from lingering in the staged garages and backhouses - outfitted with work benches and Moroccan poofs and writing desks.

1. An “accessory dwelling unit,” for those unfamiliar with the California housing crunch that has led to laws permitting homeowners to build an additional housing unit on the same plot as a detached house.