The Joy of Mindless Reverie

Sometimes I just sit in a stupor wondering what to do next.  The unending possibilities of life are so delicious, so intriguing and even so frightening that I have a lot of trouble doing anything.

Ok, I have to admit that others might not observe this coma-like state since I am more apt to be flitting nervously from task to task, in a long, long day that often begins before sunrise and ends sometime after midnight.  There are so many interesting things, so many deadlines, that the hours slip away. 

But back to that stupor…if I pause in this being-busy-every-moment pattern, stop a moment and lean my head back, close my eyes and let my mind wander like water seeping out among the crevices of so many things to think about, somehow I start to focus.  I am not sure that such a reverie will clear the fog of what is really important, or reveal what the ultimate goal of all of it actually is.  But I suspect that unstructured thinking, uninterrupted by the phone or email or people with a “quick question”, is how I am going to find my way.  In that state, things I have pushed to the back of awareness come back to the surface of my thoughts.  A solution to a design puzzle suddenly appears.  My mother’s grin and an offhand comment seem real and remind me of how she would have dealt with a certain problem.  My anxiety softens as an image of my even tempered husband, content and positive, calms me.

Practically speaking, I am hampered by my office in this effort to realize productive creative and calming thinking.  I have no door.  In the ultimate “open office” environment I don’t even have a door between me and the world, or at least my staff and various folks who wander in and out of our offices, mostly for very good reasons.

One would think that as the head of a design firm, that my personal office would have outstanding design.  Yes, I have been thinking that too.  But somehow, getting a door to my office hasn’t materialized.  Our building is a house built in 1892.  My office is in what was probably the dining room of this building, back in the day.  From what I can determine, this room has never had a door separating it from the adjacent room.  There are doors from my office to other rooms and a door to the outside. I even have a nifty secret door to the library which serves as our conference room.

But through some combination of malaise, thrift or inattention we have never added a door to the major access to my office, leaving me vulnerable to limitless interruption.  The up side is that I am also a part of the vitality of the life within our little company.  I can see and be seen, hear and be heard, an integral, open part of the activity rather than shut off from it.

So, as far as reverie, that uninterrupted, seemingly stuporous state that I like to enter occasionally to clear my mind, it isn’t very attainable.  I am thinking of repurposing a closet to find some solitude!

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