Tag: new digs

Year End: Moving Office

Jon ChaissonLeave a comment

I suppose I could start this entry with an exasperated how the hells is it December already??, but really, I’m not that surprised at all. It’s been a busy year all around.

One of the biggest changes of 2025 was our moving to our new home, and one we own rather than rent at that. To be honest, I’m still trying to wrap my head around that. There’s a sense of permanence going on that I am very much not used to. Aside from my family’s house, every other place I’ve lived in has always been a rented apartment, so it’s taking time for me to accept that we’re allowed to make changes (or not!) if we so choose. I am also greatly amused at how many quarters I can amass over time now that we own our own washer/dryer unit, and how much room our shared office has now that most of my old writings and whatnot are down in our garage storage.

Speaking of a shared office, I’m glad I chose to take the ‘clean slate’ option when we moved everything in, because Spare Oom was getting a mite bit crowded with our mutual book collection and all my writing-related stuff. I was also feeling a bit boxed in by the strict schedule I’d placed upon myself. While the whiteboard calendar had long been a source of inspiration to keep me going, it had also turned into a bit of a chain around my ankle. It all had started feeling like an assignment rather than a a craft that I enjoyed.

So when I got everything plugged in and turned on at the New Digs, I gave myself a fresh start. I didn’t do any blogging, journaling or daily words for a couple of months, instead focusing on the most important projects, Theadia and the Trilogy Remaster. I took my time deciding what decorations to put up, as I didn’t want another collage of stickers and silly things poking holes in the pristine white walls. I didn’t even update my notebook calendar with any notes like I normally would. I merely wanted to reset my priorities and find a bit of clarity.

And now here we are months later. The remastered A Division of Souls is out in the wild, Theadia is back up and running, and I’m even back to blogging and daily words. I only journal occasionally these days, as I don’t feel the need to make it a daily thing at the moment. I feel less disconnected from the world as well, considering the office’s windows overlook the street we live on, and I’m not as far away from A as I used to be. And of course we have both cat trees in here, so Juli and Cali are frequent visitors and distractors!

More to come…

Chilling

Jon ChaissonLeave a comment
Image from Laid Back Camp

That is, feeling a bit cold lately. This is around the time of year when the temperature starts to dip in the Bay Area. Not quite the freezing cold of the Northeast that I grew up with, of course, but just enough where I need the extra layers and the knitted fingerless gloves. Just enough that we have to turn the heater on for a while.

This always reminds me of those days during the Belfry Years when I’d head down to the basement in the dead of winter to work on the Bridgetown Trilogy. I’d put on extra socks and aim the space heater directly towards the underside of the desk to keep my feet warm. I’d have a heavy shirt and a sweatshirt on. I was pretty stubborn about it because the only other place in the house to work was upstairs in the computer nook which was kind of uncomfortable as it was a raised area with only a stool to sit on.

Come to think of it, this is going to be our first winter at the New Digs, so I’m curious as to how cold it’ll get. Thankfully ours is a newly renovated place with central heating and no leaky windows, so at least it won’t be drafty, but I can already tell that it’s going to be just a wee bit chilly nonetheless. We’ve already had a few rainy days come through, and although it can get windy (our street is east-west and is a natural wind tunnel for coastal breezes coming off the Pacific Ocean), it remains warmish inside.

I suppose as long as I stay wrapped up and perhaps nursing a hot tea, I should be okay here in the new writing area!

New digs, no whiteboard

Jon ChaissonLeave a comment

It’s been a couple of weeks now since we’ve moved into the new digs, and things are returning to normal. You’ve probably noticed that the wall behind my monitors are completely bare right now, and I’m actually thinking of keeping it that way for a little while. I’m really embracing the fresh start here.

You’ll notice I don’t have the whiteboard schedule up at all. It’s currently sitting somewhere on the tall black bookshelf (now to the left of my desk, as seen in the picture) alongside the two dollar bulletin board I also haven’t used in a while. Part of the fresh start was to do without the whiteboard for a bit, and I think it’s fair to say I don’t really need it at this point. My blogging schedule hasn’t changed over multiple years and I’m just that type of slightly-overprepared person where it’s cemented in my mind now.

In retrospect, I think this was part of what I needed most out of this fresh start: a true tabula rasa. It wasn’t enough to just wipe the whiteboard clean, I had to take it down and put it away. I couldn’t really try out new processes when I had the ghosts of the old ones still kicking around and looming over me. And besides, I have other real life responsibilities to take care of, now that we’re new homeowners. Non-writing errands that need doing. Cleaning and arranging to do. Cats that need pettins. Things like that. Mind you, writing time is still extremely important and I try to carve out at least an hour or so every day.

A lot of this includes some brain rewiring for me, and while I’m open-minded enough for that, it’s still a strange experience. But I’m excited to see where this leads.

Current status…getting there

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It’s been a week and change at the new place and we’ve settled in for the most part, adjusting and rearranging where necessary. The cats took the change in location pretty well, I think partly because we constantly change things up for them to keep things interesting for them. They particularly love the front stairway, because a) it echoes and b) they love going down and running back up! It’s going to be a while before it really sinks in that this is our new home now, but I’m enjoying it so far.

I’m back at the PC and working on the Trilogy Remaster project, and hope to find more time to work on Theadia when and where I can. As always, I’ll try to keep up with the blogging but I’m not going to worry too much if I don’t get around to an entry or two during the week. My longhand writing work is now hanging out in the garage, safely in one of the plastic storage tubs on the new shelves for easy access.

Still, it feels great to be back to work with the writing!

A fresh start

Jon ChaissonLeave a comment

It’s been a couple of days since we settled into our new place, with nearly everything unpacked and put away. We’re still organizing as we go of course, but for the most part it’s all where it needs to be or at least close by. And both cats have been monitoring and supervising every step of the way.

I made the decision early on to keep a lot of my stuff down in the garage storage until further notice so as to not crowd everything in our now-shared office. This means that most of my notebooks, early writings, journals, and so on are down there, still easy to access but locked away. It occurred to me that I don’t need them immediately. Not to worry, they’re in closed plastic bins and out of harm’s way. [And besides, my juvenilia has definitely seen worse storage times.] Whenever I finally get around to restarting the scanning project, they’ll be ready to go.

In the midst of all this, I realized that this gives me the opportunity for a completely fresh start here in the new office. When you’re living in the same place for over fifteen years, it’s kind of hard to go cold turkey on some of the habits and processes you’ve become so used to. So instead of trying to find where I left off with all of that journaling and longhand writing and so on, I’m just going to start a new moleskine notebook. Spend a little more time just enjoying listening to music instead of obsessively collecting and organizing it. Pick up those art supplies and have some fun during downtime. And most importantly, instead of finding a place to put up my whiteboard schedule (and not wanting to damage these pristine walls on day one), I’m just going to try my hand at working without one.

This doesn’t mean abandoning my two current projects, of course. I’ll need to pick up where I left off with the Trilogy Remaster, and I still need to finish off Theadia and start in on its revision and eventual publication. Those two have been at the front of my mind ever since we started this whole moving house chaos two months ago. Give me a day or so and I should be back on track!

Do I know where I’m going to go from here? Not entirely…but I’d like to think that’s a good thing. I’ve given myself a clean slate as it were, and I definitely need to allow myself to experience those more often.