A desk with a view

I've always had a few dreams of what I want my life's work to be. And while I cannot settle on one -- not for lack of commitment or inability to decide, but for realism knowing that my top two job choices require as much (if not more) luck as skill to get, and hence what I call 'my backup dreams.'

But regardless of what I end up doing, I've always wanted an office, or at least a space to call my own with a desk and a view.

It doesn't need to be a view of much -- just a window to the outside world. (Even an air-shaft will do. Just something that doesn't confine me to a cubicle.)

I dream of waking up and grabbing my briefcase and going to my work spot. I put down my briefcase and pull out a laptop and put it on the far corner of my desk, turn it on, but don't even look at it. Email program open, sure, but nothing else -- just there so if the outside world wants me, it can find me. My desk has no phone, just a pencil, an eraser, and 3 different color pens. (Maybe 4: Blue, Green, Red, and maybe Black..but probably not.)

In this ideal world, this is a job as a composer and the blank slate in front of me is a large sheet of score-paper awaiting my musical doodles and character-filled handwriting. On one of the walls of my office would be a book shelf filled with all my favorite books: Music dictionaries, orchestration books, film-scoring guides, and perhaps some of my favorite miniature scores. Of course I'd even have some of my 'academic' books there like some of my favorite books on media theory and social theory, including multiple books on baseball.

In another dream, there is no score paper, but the same books are there. Regardless of what I do, those things will always be a part of me and I'll always want some of those books around just to remind myself of who I am. But in other dreams, the slate in front of me is a pile of books awaiting my highlights and a clipboard eager for my notes. Whether I'm teaching this material, writing about this material, or studying this material in order to create the most perfect radio segment you've ever heard is irrelevant.

And in other dreams still, this office is a classroom with 20 (or more) small desks in it and I have the big desk off to the side. I still set things up the same way with the laptop and the work space and the pens and the books, but now my canvas isn't even in front of me on my desk, it's in front of my desk itself in the form of school children, waiting for me to poison their brains with knowledge. (And yes, poison is the deliberate word here with the pretense that not all poison is bad, but it's all mind altering.)

But regardless of what the specifics of the dream are, I have a desk and a space to call my own and a view of the world around me. Maybe it's because I've always equated a desk with importance, or maybe it's because a desk is a symbol of the thirst for enlightenment in a chose field, which I hope to never quench.

Whatever the reason may be, my future is unclear -- and always has been -- except for the desk.

(And the colored pens.)