Week 2: What does your desk look Like: A Meditation

What does my desk look like?  Something like this:

I took this panoramic shot with my phone.  It only looks like the least impractically shaped desk ever- it only has the one curve near the keyboard, then it’s just straight to the wall on the far left.  I guess if you printed this off, cut it out, and taped the ends together, you’d be able to see what it’s like as I spin around in my chair.

Looking at this picture, it is clearly my desk, but that’s not quite what it looks like, thanks to Apple’s magical picture-taking technology.   It’s an accurate picture of my desk, through a less than accurate lens.   Or maybe just a different lens.  Who’s to say really?

So what does it look like?  It looks like a desk.  A pretty new desk, in a modern, low-walled, semi-open office.  In this picture it looks a bit like a stylish Z.  Maybe that’s for my name.  Maybe the other interns’ desks look like the first letter of their name when you take a panoramic shot.  But I doubt it.  That’s what happens when your name begins with a relatively obscure letter: you see it everywhere, because everywhere you see it, it feels like it means something.  But it almost never does, at least not intentionally. 

This picture (to the right) was taken using the same technique, in the same spot, but going up and over instead of around.  If you combine the two, you get something of a feel for what it looks like to sit at my desk.  The ceiling directly above my chair is the exact center of this picture. 

I realize I could have just taken a traditional shot of my desk and posted that with a lot of exclamation points to fulfill this assignment.  But I wanted to capture what it’s like to be here, in this place, for 40 hours each week.  The sublime irony of this assigned blog topic is that Dwellworks has one of the least desk-centric office cultures you’ll find.  It’s like asking a professional diver to take a picture of his towels.  They’re important and you spend a lot of time in them, but they’re not the center of the experience.  There’s a heart to the community here and its made up of people that happen to sit at desks for their day to day tasks.   Even from a purely physical environment perspective, I wouldn’t say the desks are the most important feature of the office.

Working in the restored department store/warehouse that Dwellworks calls home gives you the opportunity to see things as not what they are or what they were, but as a little bit of both.  Who knows what all happened here over the decades, at the Woolworth & Co. couched between world famous playhouses and one of Ohio’s most regaled jewelry stores.  Now, it’s a wide open post-industrial office-space, repurposed so we can have a place to work. 

That’s probably the easiest answer: what does my desk look like?  It looks like a place to work.  For as exciting as the décor around here is, all of the desks basically look the same.  Some are bigger than others (mine is decently large) but they all have the same furniture and the same cube-walls.  Some people decorate theirs (I haven’t yet, and might not), but they all look the same. 

They are all compartmentalized places to work.  They provide each of us our own space, to do the work we need to do.    But Dwellworks wouldn’t be Dwellworks if only the action at the desks mattered.  This is a great office to work in because people regularly get away from their desks to collaborate or engage coworkers on a personal level

Take, for instance, how low the cubicle walls are.   I like to look around throughout the day and say hi to the people that pass by.  Even when someone is working their hardest, there is always a spirit of accessibility.  No Dwellworks employee is an island. 

That’s why it’s a bit of a shame that the upper level of our office is a bit like a wasteland.  There are times when I come back to my desk and end up in the wrong row.  There are only 6 people in the handful of desks that make up my row. Downstairs, I would have neighbors on all sides.  Up here, I sometimes end up at the wrong desk because it’s nearly impossible to tell all of the uninhabited desks apart.  Sometimes the peacefulness is nice, but more often, there’s a measure of melancholy detachment from the rest of the office. 

 Despite all that, I’ve got my desk and it is a fine place to work, and will be a fine place to work for these next 50 days of summer.  I think we’d all agree though, that one of the best things about working at Dwellworks, is how un-central the desk is to our day to day work.

                                     Til next week,

                                                 -Zack