Back in my own space again

Today I move at my own pace – blank slate

I’m back in my home office again.

It’s been months, since I was in here regularly. I had been working downstairs in the dining room, where I have better wireless connectivity and I can move around the downstairs without disturbing my spouse.

But nowadays, I really need to get back into my office. My study. My refuge. Everything in this room is here because I want it to be. I need it. I value it. That’s not to say I don’t want and value what’s downstairs. I do. It’s just not all mine, and it’s shared space with not only my spouse but anybody else who comes over to the house.

Granted, there are not that many people who come by, anymore. I can’t deal with having a lot of people in my home. Not anymore. We used to have company over a lot. But in the past several years, that’s faded away. I’m too tired, by the end of each week, to deal with people. And when I do have extra social activities on the weekend, it really takes a lot out of me. I hate that it does, and I do plenty to offset it — like working on my stamina and pacing myself better during the week — but it’s still an issue.

A tired brain is a cranky brain. And when my brain is cranky, it’s not much fun to be around.

Truly.

And too many other people have found out. I’ve gone ballistic on some folks whose only crime was being in my house when I was too tired to interact with them. They were friends, and they considered me a friend. But now they don’t talk to me. Oh, well. So it goes. At times, my life is easier without having a lot of regular friends in it, to tell the truth. Does that sound sad? It’s not. I need my peace and quiet. I need my rest. There’s only so much of other people I can take, even on my best days.

That being said, I’d been able to work downstairs in the dining room, because we rarely use the room for eating, except when we have company.  We use it to store things — boxes we haven’t decided what to do with, yet, as well as other packing materials. Papers and mail that isn’t time-sensitive and just needs a place to “sit” till I figure out what to do with them all. Books. Books. More books. Things we’ve moved from other rooms, to make space for our everyday lives. And there’s room for me to set up a workspace at the dining room, which is exactly what I’d done over the winter. The dining room is warmer than my study in the fall and winter, in any case, so that’s part of why I moved my “operations” there.

But not having my own space has gotten to me. I need to close a door behind me and settle into my own frame of mind — the mentality that sets in when I’m in my own space. I have my books around me, my music, my artwork, my papers. It’s all here. All my fascinations from over the years. And all my neurology info. Especially my neuro info.

So, now I’ve moved back into my study, and I’m looking out the window at the bird feeder and the falling snow. We got more snow last night, and now the wind is up, so it’s cascading off the trees, so it looks like we’re having a blizzard. We’re not. That’s just the overnight snow being tossed by the breeze. But it looks pretty intense at times.

It’s Sunday. That’s good. I have a whole day to pretty much do as I please, and that’s a welcome change. It’s not that I’m going to indulge myself… it’s that I have a lot that I want to do, and not having other responsibilities driven by others’ needs is making it possible for me to make some headway.

Write some blog posts. Read some papers. Get the word out about brain injury recovery being both possible and probable. I’m on a mission. And having my own workspace makes it easier for me to focus on that.

So, yes. Onward.