Working is child's play

We are moving house soon, and at last, AT LAST, I will have a room of my own to write. OK, so I’ll probably have to share it with my husband, but to all intents and purposes, I will have my own study, my own writing room, my own creative sanctuary.

Am I happy? Of course. Am I sad? A little….

Currently I share my desk with my children’s toys, my study is their playroom. I write where they play, our imaginations working furiously together.

And as my creativity mingles with theirs, our energies bounce together, chatting and jumping like the Jack-in-the-box in the corner. Prams, half-dressed dolls, tired jigsaws, and gaudy ponies with synthetic hair litter their lair. Their half is wild and exploded, chaos in chemistry – a fairy in the dolls house, lego pieces in the pens drawer, playthings as scattered as their bouncing brains. My half is neater and calmer, and duller. Blue and black files stacked tall, books precariously piled high, mounds of paper trails leading to my biggest toy, the computer.

Their bookcase is a rainbow of colour, mine a monochrome of monotony. While their mouse runs up the plastic yellow clock, my mouse works against the ticking clock as deadlines loom. I sit at the desk, thinking, straining, one hand writing, the other stroking their hair while they toddle at my feet. And at night, as they murmur in their sleep upstairs, heads still racing, but bodies limp with exhaustion, I sit in the noise of their silence and work.

I’ve yearned for so long to have a room to call my own (see 14th March 2008 blog), imagining serenity in silence, peaceful pontificating, retreating from the wreckage to write words of wisdom and wit.

But I suspect, at times, as the silence crushes my creativity, I might yearn for the chaos, and I might take a trip from my privacy to hang out in the playroom to recharge my head, and recharge my heart. Although let's be clear - I'll be running back upstairs as quickly as that is done... and possibly even locking the door! Roll on the move!