NOTE: I’m taking a winter retreat from the newsletter to focus on other writing and travel. The next new post will arrive around the first of March. Until then, I hope you find time to rest, reflect, and even bash into some joy.

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A recent trip to New York’s Tenement Museum has me thinking about the vastly different ways we experience home, work, rest, and productivity. Take the home office.

Although home is an elusive concept, many of us grew up thinking of home and the office as fundamentally different places. But the apartments of the Tenement Museum — bulging with families of immigrants who often worked, ate, slept, made love, lived and died in the same three small rooms — reminded me that the ideal (some would say fantasy) was, for many, unattainable. Living above the shop or actually in the workroom was common in many countries, including our own.

The home/work division became more widespread for the middle and upper classes during the period when the late industrial revolution morphed into the information age. I’ve been fortunate to work in some amazing spaces in my career: in Staunton’s Wharf Historic District; Charleston’s William Aiken House; Washington’s historic McCormick Apartments/Andrew Mellon Building at 18th and Massachusetts; and the iconic Watergate Office Building, overlooking the Potomac River. All very different, but all important — yes, even hallowed in my mind — because of the work done there to save some of the country’s most important places that continue to link past, present and future generations together.

That all changed in 2020.

In these post-pandemic years of remote work, many have moved from makeshift solutions to create more permanent home offices. While retirement has all but ended the necessity of telework for me, I’ve nonetheless been thinking about the space I inhabit and the ways I honor and use it day in and day out. I’ve also thought about how the home office can easily intrude on the important time when we rest.

In writing on the joys of slowness, Cal Newport references a 1951 monograph by Abraham Joshua Heschel titled simply, The Sabbath. Early in the book, Heschel notes that the Abrahamic faiths found something Godly in a ritual of rest amid the flow of time.

The Sabbath is a day for the sake of life. Man is not a beast of burden, and the Sabbath is not for the purpose of enhancing the efficiency of his work.

Work is important and good, Newport writes. But it’s not everything. “Doing less should sometimes be about enjoying the beauty of right now.”

And for those who work from home, we have to be intentional as to how we find that rest.

Recent efforts to declutter as well as conversations focused on future housing options brought these thoughts top-of-mind. January’s snowy weather also kept me indoors to contemplate how I shape my space and the ways in which the space shapes me.

My writing studio is a work in progress. Claire gave me permission to continue shaping this top-floor retreat from her childhood bedroom into a more personal space that can nurture good writing habits and prompt inspiration.

In space both utilitarian and aspirational, the desk is situated between two gable windows, letting in lots of light. On one side are books (bags of books) and a table for project work.

On the other side sits a comfortable chair and ottoman for reading (and because I need the rest, the ever more frequent 20-minute afternoon nap), a small guitar when I’m ready for a break, and remembrances from travels.

The windows bring their own delights: views of snow-covered trees as on a recent January day and the sounds of birds and squirrels in the other three seasons that make up our annual cycle of life.

And since my writing studio doubles as the guest room or Claire’s bedroom, on the rare occasions she’s home, this spacious loft also holds some of her artful photography as well as the bedroom suite that my father received from his beloved uncle, David Jefferson Wagner (I was named for Uncle Dave and my grandfather).

Elizabeth Dodson Gray suggests that “what hallows a space is what happens there.” Former New York Times architectural critic Herbert Muschamp was thinking along similar lines when he wrote that “the essential feature of a landmark is not its design, but the place it holds in a city’s memory.” In natural spaces, of course, what happens does not necessarily need to occur with humans present.

Jan Richardson notes:

From the contours of our inner selves to the places in which we live, play, and work to our home planet and beyond, we dwell in and move through spaces that take on meaning according to how we engage them. Sacred space is born of relationship, of care, of what we give and receive.

I am working to create and hallow a space to help me focus on craft, care, and thoughtfulness. The studio can lead, if I’m fortunate, to vibrant writing full of amazement, wonderment, joy, and love. And because it is at “home” I’ve also ensured there’s time and a place for rest. In this new era of shared homes and offices, we can still strive to create and utilize our spaces in ways that enrich us and give them meaning.

More to come . . .

DJB

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*On the same day I took the picture of the snowy tree outside my window, Claire sent these pictures from her retreat center . . . in Costa Rica.

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Top photo by Roberto Nickson on Unsplash. All others by DJB and Claire Holsey Brown.