As you may know, I have a home-based business writing and editing resumes and letters for people, mostly in the local area, but also farther afield. I edit other sorts of pieces, but seldom any longer-term jobs. Because job search work is confidential, I work by appointment only. (I also do photo art, which adds the occasional trek beyond local confines.)
Anyway, working at home could get boring because of the sameness of the work environment. This morning, we have rain, the air is cool, and Samantha and I have moved out to the gazebo. I love to listen to the rain on the roof. If it gets too cool, I can pull out an old quilt to wrap up in or close the windows to keep out the breeze (and rain). Have you noticed that when it’s raining, the birds and squirrels find shelter…and then they talk among themselves quite loudly. Their chatter makes for a continuous background for the rain, here, rising above the sounds of the wind moving through the leaves of the trees and the suddenly clearer sounds of the train to the north of me and the traffic on a main thoroughfare to the south, both many blocks away. I note that the construction folks finished up with the roof they were shingling, yesterday, a couple lots away from ours. The hammering and loud conversations were more distracting than the rainfall and the wildlife–although there is that squirrel…
Sometimes I even come out here to work in the wintertime, on sunny days, when the light comes into the gazebo and warms the air to above freezing. In the summer, the exercise bike lives out here, giving me at least an hour a day to be out of the house, as long as the temperature is below 90F degrees. On those warmer days, It is coolest in the basement, and so the dogs and I retreat downstairs to sit among the quilts and pillows. They nap while I work. (Hardly seems fair!)
I guess this is about quiet spaces, really. We need times apart from the structure, the confines of walls and telephones and tasks. We need them for renewal. We need renewal every day, not just on weekends or vacations. Not an Anthony Newley Stop the World–I Want to Get Off, but a stepping outside of the boundaries for a little while.
