Office Hours

When I was a teenager, I had a powerful aversion to the idea of working in an office. Of course, this was a rather privileged perspective. Working in an office sounds a lot more nice than working on an oil rig, still less a battlefield. But it still sounded like something to avoid, if it was possible — personally and professionally constrictive.

I would not have guessed how privileged I ended up being. Instead of working in an office, I ended up working in my own office.

During the pandemic, I was a full-time English teacher, doing lessons over Skype in my living room. I was also going a bit mad. Again, I appreciate how much worse things could have been. I could have been working on a critical care ward. But it still felt a little like the walls were closing in.

So, I was looking forward to going back to school midway through 2021. Understandably, though, my boss had been having enough success with online lessons that she saw no need to pay office space. We could just stay online!

Well, I couldn’t. It didn’t feel like I had a home any more — just a place where I worked, drank and slept. I was going to have to quit — or to rent my own office.

The latter made a lot more sense. It meant paying a lot of money to the owners every month, yes, but if I had quit I wouldn’t have had much money to begin with. Plus, I thought that I could do some private lessons there — and some writing, of course. So, I went online and found a lovely space in the attic of a beautiful old building in the centre of my town.

It never occurred to me that I would be so lucky as to get a job in editing, which happened a year later. So, I have done far fewer lessons than I expected. For most of the time, I have been working alone — The Critic’s one-man Polish newsroom.

As much as I had wanted to create some distance between my work life and my home life, the office has become a second home. I have taught thousands of lessons here, written hundreds of articles — as well as most of two books — here, read here, drunk here, slept here, talked here, podcasted here, played guitar here, cried here, kissed here and lain on the sofa here thinking about life, death and the latest WWE results.

I’m extremely fortunate to be a professional writer in any sense, and I try to take it seriously as work. So, for several years I would spend almost as many of my waking hours here as I did at home. I used to be proud if I was the first person in the building in the morning and the last person to leave it at night (though of course it is easier to work longer hours if instead of accounting or selling real estate you are holding forth on why the woke have gone too far).

But I’ve also had a lot of fun here. Opposite me are two bottles of mead — one empty, one full. A friend and I imagined that we could drink them both in an evening. By the end of one, of course, the sugar — quite apart from the alcohol — had made us feel thoroughly nauseous.

On the next bookshelf is a display of empty Monster Energy cans. A lot of my work has been powered by Monster Energy, so it seemed appropriate. Next to me is a glove puppet, mounted on a mug — as if impersonating a hunter’s trophy. I suspect the people in the very clean and professional offices opposite mine have no idea what the hell I’m doing.

At one point, it struck me that I should buy some sort of plant to brighten up the place. It hadn’t struck me that my offices has no windows. I left the skeleton of the plant as a tribute to my thoughtlessness.

The most important feature of my office, though, has been the painting of my mum on the wall behind me. I hope she would be proud of the work I’ve done here — if not of my old habit of cracking open a Tyskie on a Friday afternoon.

Since getting my dog, Buddy, I have spent less time in the office. Now, I also spend a few days a week in the city where my girlfriend lives. Renting the office was always quite financially irresponsible (even if I told myself — and was probably accurate in doing so — that I did a lot more work because I had it). Now, it is downright financially stupid.

I don’t need to leave my home to edit and write. God knows, a lot of people do it — as well as other far more difficult or aggravating jobs — with the added burden of kids crying, or neighbours arguing, or landlords threatening to evict them. But I’m really going to miss this place. Whatever has been happening in life — relationship problems, dying pets, mental health struggles et cetera — it has been a place where I have closed the door and focused on being creative and productive. I had always associated working in an office with having to conform and comply. Here, though, I have largely been able to be myself — whether that meant working on random short stories or building a tower of empty Monster Energy cans. What a blessing.

I just wish that I had got around to making a cool metal sign with my name on it. Maybe — maybe — in the future I will get another chance.