My ‘Work’space

I remember at one point the director at work made it known that he wanted desks to be nice and clean. ‘An organised desk indicates an organised mind’ was the justification offered.

Now my desks are always a mess, as verified by the below image, but I don’t see this as a negative thing. After all, an organised desk doesn’t technically imply that it must be a clean desk. After all, what does a clean desk say about us; a clean mind? Or what’s worse, when I look around and see some of my colleagues with an all but empty desk, then what am I supposed to infer?

My desk is a mess, but I know where everything is. It may very well be a nice analogue of my mind, a veritable cacophony of thoughts and beliefs whirling helter skelter all over the place which, if taken as a whole might appear to be utter chaos, however look a bit closer, and you may find there is a thread of coherency holding it all together.

I am keen to make this blog a place for me to write not only my rants on topics, or links to amusing or interesting articles, but also as a sort of journal, and a way of laying down whatever can be called my personality on the web. So in the spirit of making this a personal endeavour between me, and you dear reader, I thought I would share my workspace (note the inverted commas in my title, they are there for a reason) as it sits now with you, so that you might get a better picture of who I am. Or at least, who I am at work.

Behold!

This is the best I could manage to fit in two photos from my phone, with a bit of ad hoc photo manipulation achieved solely through Microsoft Word; but I think it gets the job done. I have even added some labels for the various doodads adorning my workspace:

1.       Old Christmas decoration made from an incised business card.
2.       Rolled up plan I should have dealt with long ago.
3.       Post it notes stuck under my desk.....
4.       Guernica, a painting by Pablo Picasso.
5.       Spiderman (with spider sense tingling)
6.       Very tiny origami crane (it's the white dot at Spiderman’s leg)
7.       The Portable Atheist by Christopher Hitchens
8.       Multiple print offs in both colour and black and white (we are supposed to save money by printing in black and white, yet I end up printing off two copies, because when I actually need colour, I forget that the default setting is black and white, thus wasting more money in the end......)
9.       The Great Wave Off Kanagawa - woodblock print by the Japanese artist Hokusai.
10.   Can holder filled up a third of the way with all the used staples from two years of council work
11.   Origami rubbish bins
12.   Mobile phone dock made from binder clips

I also have a few more pieces of art printed off and attached to the wall at my left in order to make myself appear more cultured than I am. As well as some photos I have printed off of my wife and son in order to help me through the more dreary work days.

So that is my workspace as it sits today. A little bit of craziness stuck in the middle of the bureaucracy that is local government; a description which could just as easily describe me, as my desk...