Messy desks and the myth of the perfect workspace

a moodboard, because no one's desk actually looks like that

Whenever I see one of those ‘here’s my workspace’ posts with the perfect photos of a sleek, clean, and pristine desk, I vom a little. 

who actually lays out all their stuff like this??

Everything is super shiny and outta-the-box new and way too…glossy??

Surely, real people do not live this way? 

My desk?

My desk is a mess.

There’s a good chance yours is too and ya know what? That’s great.

In fact, I feel like our culture’s fixation on things being perfect and clean and ordered is a big part of why we’ve become so obsessed with tools that promise optimization and productivity. “Finally, something to help me get all of this in order,” we think to ourselves, “then, once that’s done, I can get to work.” 

Except that day never comes.

Embrace the chaos.

Bless this mess. 

Time and time again I find that sitting in the messy discomfort of not-yet-knowing what an essay might become is where the best stuff happens.

Or as

Melissa Wiley

so perfectly put, Makers Gotta Mess.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with clean. But a, “…societally-induced value judgement on “clean” vs. “messy” has however lodged itself deep within us,” as

Anna Brones

wrote in The Mess of a Creative Space.

And from that shame, we perform perfection.

So, we are told to be ‘authentic.’

But what is ‘authentic’? Does such a thing even exist?

So which is it?

Is authenticity the goal or itself a performance?

Still, I have no answer.

And maybe that’s the answer.

Maybe we feel most like ourselves when we transcend the self entirely?

Maybe in order to find ourselves we must lose ourselves?

Maybe.

Maybe not.

Either way, the things we get lost inside of — art and love and sport and comedy and that feeling when everyone in the restaurant is singing “happy birthday” to the one lady at the one table even though no one knows her — that’s the good stuff.

The messy stuff of a life well lived.

In an effort to honor and embrace the mess as much as the clean, please find below a moodboard exploring these ideas + some photos of my very messy and no-longer embarrassing space.

Anna Brones’ essay The Mess of a Creative Space has become a cornerstone of my thinking on these ideas

Here’s my desk. It’s a mess.

Classic shot from above, ft. me the artist and owner of the space.

Are we human? Or are we trash heaps?

Here’s a close up of the stuff on the desk including my page of doodles. I can’t draw so I just do little arrows. There’s also a thing of twenty cards I bought from Paper Source because I have recently decided to become “a greeting card guy”. In the back left you can see a tintype Lauren gave me a few years ago of her and our dog Robert.

Obligatory list of gear: (a) Bic lighter, incense (not pictured), and incense holder, (b) 32gb thumb drive for some reason, (c)Tongue cleaner I bought on Amazon once, (d) Tiny Moleskin notebook full of blah blah blah, (e) Yellow case - toenail clippers, (f) Bose headphone case, (g) Club Desire, a book written by my friend,. the great poet Laura Lamb Brown-Lavoie, (h) Old AirPod case that says “old” on it - doesn’t work anymore because I put them in the wash, (i) Old adapter that connects a sega genesis to my tv, (j) Checkbook for all the checks I’m always writing, (k) Another photo of Lauren and I - if you look closely you can see its cracked, (l) Some air freshener stuff I never use, (m) Tube of Abreva for my cold sores.

This year’s Halloween costume: the haunting realization that you’re not actually doing anything

And maybe that’s not such a bad thing? maybe the obsession around being yourself is itself a false god?

Here’s a close up look at my gross mousepad. And there is a tintype we took for Wilder’s first birthday. We haven’t found a good frame for it so it just sort of sits there. Also, that’s two tintypes on the desk - nice.

Or maybe don’t strive at all! Get lost in the sauce of something bigger than yourself and bam, there you are, authentic and alive.

My cable management + a box of ink cartridges for a printer we don’t have anymore. Also there’s a pair of Lauren’s Birkenstocks down here. We have the same size foot so I can wear her shoes. Actually her foot is bigger but delete this part.

Here’s a wide shot so you can see that my office is, in fact, in the living room. There is baby Wilder looking at his books. He often walks over to my office to have a chat and see what I’m working on. Also he now will just walk over there when I’m not around and pull random cables, hide hard drives, etc. Classic Jim-Dwight stuff, really. Also see that black hard back chair thing on the ground? I bought that for meditation only to realize it’s a huge scam because basically every floor + wall can do the same thing.

The blind spot is real.

“We are who we pretend to be” - Kurt Vonnegut.

The cards above plus many, many more can be found in my “myth of the perfect, clean workspace” collection.

PS: I want to see your Messy Space!!

I have a feeling that I’m not the only one out there with a messy space. If you are also a part of the MSEU (Messy Space Extended Universe), I would love to see it!

Simply e-mail me at alex@sublime.app with the details and/or photos. Maybe if there are enough people who share, we’ll even feature some in an upcoming newsletter.

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In other news…

“Build a soulful, second brain”

Huge thank you to

Claudia Dawson

for this amazing write-up in Recomendo, the newsletter she runs with Kevin Kelly and Mark Frauenfelder:

Sublime is a personal knowledge management tool crafted with soul. I've been allowing myself to digitally hoard all the beautiful words and insightful advice I come across online. Everything you save in Sublime becomes a card, and these cards can be organized into collections.

There's also a communal aspect to Sublime; you can follow other users and search public collections for cards to add to your library. I love that it encourages connections, synchronicities, and learning. I imported all of my Readwise book highlights and have been using Sublime as a literary Pinterest.

Building Sublime with vibes

Earlier this week,

Elan Miller

from

The Off-Menu Newsletter

interviewed

Sari Azout

on Sublime’s product development philosophy and the role *vibes* play in building Sublime. Check it out here:

How to make users go ‘whoa’

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