Room with a View

After nearly a year of moaning about the sun hitting my computer screen from 11 to 3 every day, I've changed my office around. Not only is the sun problem solved, but now I have a view!

My office is north-facing (the sunny side in the southern hemisphere). It gets pretty hot in summer, but it's lovely in winter. Most of the wall is taken up by window, and although it only faces the college hall across the road, a couple of parked cars, a big gum tree, a sloping bank of grass and a half-window of sky, it's great! Stress relief for me has a lot to do with nature - seeing it, smelling it, feeling it, imagining it. When I feel overwhelmed I take a mini-break and stare out the window a bit. Sometimes I look for new spring flowers in the grass, or watch fluffy clouds drifing by, or the rain pouring down the window.

I've also done something I don't usually do - closed my office door. Mainly so the aircon can warm up my little space. The under-desk heater I was using doesn't reach this far from the plug point. But it's had some superb side effects - the noise level from outside is down dramatically, I have less random poppers-in, and have been able to get a lot more work done. Yesterday I basically cleared my desk, so have a bit of time today to sit and think, plan, organize and declutter.

Lately, being at my office has become less stressful than being at home. I have 4 sets of new neighbours - and 2 of them have no notion of time or volume. They tend to be loud in talk and music and running up and down until very late, which gets me going to no end. Not that I'd go out and moan at them, but I do "hint" sometimes. Like recently, when I let the dogs out to go pee, but they barked as one of the guys ran past. I said (to the dog), "Hey, no barking - everyone's already sleeping!" - and the music got turned down immediately afterwards... :)

I've been craving space and quiet and room to move yet again. My office is tiny, but the view expands it. My home is tiny too - granted, it has a patch of lawn we call the garden and a view to die for, but the ceilings and walls are solid concrete and any footstep or door-slam from the neighbours echoes through my place too. I've been longing for a home far from people, where I don't look up from gardening to see the kid upstairs watching me, where I don't look at the view and see the neighbours (who then think I'm looking at them, not the view), where I can truly unwind at the end of the day without getting wound up again by car, people and radio noise. I don't know if I'll get a home like that on this earth, or if I have to wait until I can order my own planet in heaven....

I know "community" is touted in Real Christian Living circles, but at this rate I want to avoid community just to get a break from people!

My mind's been wandering, imagining what packing up for a month and heading out to Nowhere would be like. Just driving, or camping, or being in a people-less place, surrounded by nature. Oh man, I could do with that now. A recent nature programme on TV told of a couple who for 14 years have been filming the big cats in Africa - FOURTEEN YEARS! Wow. I wonder what that would be like. To spend years out in God's creation, studying and getting to know the creatures of His hands. I'm pretty sure they're not half as stressed out and burned out as most of the rest of us.

Unfortunately, it's highly unlikely that I would be able to chuck it all in and go make nature movies. Though I am thinking of an extended trip with a good camera... But for today, for right now, my room with a view will have to do. It will have to be the natural world I can see and feel. It will have to be my peace and quiet for today.