The importance of having a hovel

This past week—and for the second time in the past six months—I rearranged my office. 

My office is a very small bedroom on the upper storey of our old house. If you were actually using it as a bedroom, you’d be lucky if you could get a double bed in it; if you managed that, you could maybe fit a small wardrobe in the corner in lieu of a closet. Said and done, you’d be left with a couple square feet to move around.

But despite it being small, I love this room. It has two windows: one facing west and one north, so that all afternoon daylight spills in through the gauzy curtains I hung when we first moved in. Plants thrive here. My monstera (affectionately named Winifred) has nearly tripled in size since we moved in, climbing up the wall and sending out inquisitive air roots in all directions. The old wooden floors are almost laughably slanted, so every piece of furniture is supported with shims and even then it does kind of feel like you might be tilting left when you’re sitting at my desk. I’ve covered almost every square inch of wall space with shelves and art, a testament to my strictly anti-minimalist decor tastes. Dried bouquets, including my wedding bouquet and the flowers Mike got me for our first wedding anniversary, hang from the curtain rods. There are also some random sticks on top of picture frames—don’t ask, can’t explain. If you look hard enough, you’ll find more than one pinecone hiding out on various shelves.

It is, all in all, a very perfect little hovel for me.

In such a small room, I have essentially two options of where to put my desk. This week I returned it to its original position nestled up in the northwestern corner. If I turn my head right, I can look out at our backyard and the bird feeders and trees—in fact right now, I can see our two resident mourning doves picking at sunflower seeds on the ground.

I’ve set this room up to be as cozy and as nature-filled as possible, because I’ve learned over the years how important it is for me to have a safe and quiet place to get work done. I know that a lot of people like to work in coffee shops or libraries or other places where humanity congregates, but that’s never been me. No matter what kind of work I’m doing, if I need to focus, it needs to happen somewhere where I’m alone—and I know that a lot of people feel the same.

Having a room like this is a huge privilege, one that was a pipe dream to me for a long time. But how I feel in this room is so foundational to my ability to create that it really brings home why I think aesthetics are so important. Because it’s not just about how it looks: it’s about having a space that is filled with things that bring me joy, a space that reminds me constantly that it is mine, and quiet, and safe.

Something I think about a lot is psychological safety. I’ve gone through times in my life where I did not have that basic sense of safety, and I think that part of what draws me so much to a slow, cozy lifestyle is a response to those experiences. My office is more than a room: it’s a manifestation of the safety I’ve worked really hard to achieve. And since creativity can’t flourish without safety, it’s also a manifestation of how I’m building a life to support my creative side.

Incidentally, this is why I think the tortured starving artist motif is bullshit: you’ll create better art when you’re mentally well and physically safe, no matter what the tropes tell you. I also think that this is another argument for universal basic income. If we want to live in a society that creates great things, people need their basic needs met so they can draw and write and paint and make music and invent. Imagine what we’d be able to achieve if we weren’t all so busy working like mad just to afford rent and groceries? How many world-changing artists might be out there today, unable to create art because they’re too exhausted from working three jobs? The answer isn’t to offload the job of the artist to AI. But I digress.

(And yeah, I am aware that I’m basically just re-arguing Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own—money and a room of your own are necessary for art.)

Anyways, I think all that is why I’m always making little (and sometimes not-so-little) changes in my office. Moving the desk around; adding a rug; changing up the wall art. In every permutation, making it just that little bit more me, that little bit more comfortable. 

And one of my favourite things about this room is that I can leave it, take three steps down the hall, and walk into Mike’s office, which is vastly different from my own and still set up on the very same principles. Mike’s creativity takes very different forms from mine, and his room reflects it: tons of tools on the wall, a huge desk, a custom-built computer. Mike’s office doubles as our guest room, since it can actually fit a bed, and so often at night I’ll lounge on the bed while he programs something or builds a mini computer or plays video games. 

It was Mike who suggested I write about the importance of having a hovel (his words), and I think it’s because he understands it deeply—the magic of a little space where your brain can run free.

Mike also asked if he could write a guest post all about toad facts, so stay tuned for that some day.

Until next time.