that feng shui book

Yeah, I know, it's pretty ironic that there's a feng shui book visible in the picture of my piled-on desk. (Which is now completely cleared off!) But there's a reason. I think one of the problems I've been having in this study has to do with its arrangement. I've never been fully satisfied with it, and it's not a room that feels good to spend time in. So I figured that I'd consult a couple of books for ideas prior to my moving the furniture. (The arrangement it's been in has mostly been due to the semi-random placement of the filing cabinets as we were moving in -- that plus the windows didn't seem to give me many options. But I can move the files, if I have to. And I think I will.)

I own a feng shui book that I've found helpful -- clear and easy to understand, even if her writing style includes a few too many jokes for my taste: Move Your Stuff, Change Your Life by Karen Rauch Carter. But I picked up a few others from the downtown library yesterday just to compare and see if they had workspace-specific tips that could be helpful. Anyway, it turns out that because of the shape of our house, there might be an energetic reason that my study has never been a great work spot. So there are some things I'm going to try that might help me transform the room.

I didn't even own a desk for something like 15 or 20 years, because I feared that it would just wind up covered in stacks. I don't usually sit at a desk -- I'm either at the computer table, or I'm reading/grading on the couch in the living room. But there are certain kinds of tasks that I do like to have a work surface for. So I got this desk a couple of years ago and I did try to keep it clear. But ever since we moved to this house last summer, it's been a disaster.

But all this can change. And I'm starting now.