AT LAST!

[rebeccmeister]

One of my favorite Virigia Woolf books (aside from To the Lighthouse and Mrs. Dalloway) is A Room of One's Own. It's the book that got Woolf labeled as a feminist, and rightly so. I don't really want to discuss the entirety of feminism here and now (if you recall, I'm a tad busy these days), but the whole idea of having a room to one's self is quite important.

I finally have such a room, in the lab space of another professor. It has a table. It has chairs. It has an internet connection. It has a door that I can close and lock. And that's about all that it has in it. No people, no other distractions (aside from the internet, but that'll just take a healthy dose of self-control). I got a key to this office just today, and in the couple of hours I've spent in it, I've gotten more done than I got done in a week in my old "office." You have no idea how happy this has made me. This is the best room ever. And, actually, the desk in this room is basically my ideal desk--enough space to spread things out comfortably and everything.

Anyway, after a productive day, it's time to take a break and go rock climbing. Yay!

...yes, there're still piles of work to slog through. But they're slightly smaller now. (:

Comments

[boolean263.livejournal.com]

That rocks! I'm glad you've got your own little private productive space. I hope it continues to work wonders for you!

I have a suspicion that's not quite what Woolf was writing about, but I'd have to read the book to be certain. (:

[rebeccmeister.livejournal.com]

A Room of One's Own was based on a speech Woolf gave about her experiences at Cambridge, I believe. It might have been Oxford. The underlying point in the book is that if a woman is to be a writer, she must have a room of her own, free from other distractions, to write in. Her descriptions of her frustration with the male-ness of academia are quite incredible as well because she has an incredibly unique narrative style.