The myth of the perfect, clean workspace

I was talking to a younger friend about this a while back—your Internet presence is increasingly more valuable than your real-life presence. Which is weird and dystopian and I don’t really know how to think about it. But it’s true, and I think people who are like,  I don’t need the Internet , don’t understand the extent to which much of the

... See more

Anne Helen Petersen has written about the “professionalization” of homes, thanks to the “market-reflected gaze,” and I think that this extends to the creative space as well—we base our expectations of our creative spaces not off of how we work best, but what we think creative spaces should look like. That clean and organized aesthetic also... See more

Suddenly, being on a laptop in the middle of a work day is an act worthy of someone’s attention. Maybe they’ll see the picture and notice more than just you at work - a decoration in your house, a new haircut, an alarming error in a SQL query you wrote. We’re suddenly funneling attention into the parts of our lives that we would never even journal... See more

This makes its way into our subconscious, influencing our own tendency to crop things out or move things around if we’re going to take a picture of our creative space. Oh the horror if someone were to learn that real life was happening in the same place you make art!

We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”

―

Kurt Vonnegut,

Mother Night

Artists, like humans, contain multitudes and when it comes to the spaces we create in, they all look different. If we do find ourselves on the messier side, we also know that there’s a difference between a mess you love, that inspires, and keeps the connections flowing, and a mess that blocks, hinders, and holds you back. A fun mess and a... See more