Office space

Today, I printed a comic that I might hang up in my office at work. Which seems pretty dull stuff, but is a little bit of a big deal. See, my office is pretty sparse in terms of decorations. A couple of people have mentioned that I need to decorate it (which, considering that 75% of the staff is at home on any given day, a couple of people is a lot more than it sounds). 

My office decor consists of the Muller, Feith, Fruin frisbee, a few things I've pinned up under the desk cabinets, a picture of a Lotus Elise on the cabinet door, and some postcards on the eraser tray of the whiteboard. And then a bunch of boxes and archival collections. And since I finally cleaned off my desk, even that looks sparse. 

But there's a reason, and this little anecdote (also from today) may explain it: I was standing at the counter outside of my office doing some work and one of our volunteers kept coming by to deliver stuff to me. I joked that I should maybe use my office once in a while, and the volunteer said, "Yeah, if you don't use it you'll lose it." "Yes, well, I've had 6 offices in 6 years, so I've learned don't get attached."

Yes folks. Six offices in 6 years, and 1.5 of those years were working from home so they couldn't move office spaces if they'd wanted to. After the 4th move, I packed up all my professional books and took them home. And stopped decorating my space for the most part (besides, it wasn't great for decorating anyway. It lacked the right cubicle features). For the 5th move, I had 3 boxes of files, a stack of board games, and computer equipment to move. Nothing else (keep it light. Not just because of the moves, but also because I'm an archivist not a hoarder). Move number 6 consisted mostly of archival collections. And for the past month, I've also taken over a table at the opposite end of my team's 'aisle'. (Look, you need space to process archival collections. An office desk doesn't cut it). 

So, yes. It's kind of a big deal that I might hang up a cartoon in my office. But, the decision isn't final, so we'll just have to see.