After years of what can kindly be referred to as procrastination, I finally buckled down and pulled my home office/writing space together. Join me now as I share its writerly awesomeness with you, my beloved readers, viewers, and colleagues.
Step one was to upgrade my tech.
I boosted my desktop and monitor reality from an ancient Dell Dimension 8300 that was slowly failing, to a much more recent refurbished Dell OptiPlex 7020-SFF Core i7, 1TB SSD with 16GB of memory and a NVIDIA GeForce GT 1030 2GB graphics card. It purrs like a kitten and is a HUGE improvement over my previous machine. I got the refurbished desktop from Amazon. Admittedly, this was a budget solution, but it works just fine for me. I'll admit to being a little nervous about a "used" computer, but its been running great since December 2021, and I'm really pleased with its performance.
I then purchased a new HP 24" monitor with a HDMI connection to take
advantage of the NVIDIA card. Another BIG improvement that I wish I would've done sooner. Age of Empires III never looked better!
Next, I installed a massive memory upgrade on my muscular, business-level Lenovo ThinkPad laptop. It went from 16GB-->32GB. This thing smokes now, especially when its hooked up to my 100ft. ethernet cable. 100ft. ethernet cable?! Yeah, that helps my burly laptop bypass lagging wi-fi in my house (lots of draws on my bandwidth) by directly hooking into the router which is on another floor.
Step two was to take down my ragtag assortment of animation-related wall decorations and replace the dingy-looking tan walls with a restful/calming/classy "Sage Gray" paint in an eggshell finish. I absolutely love this new color.
After that, I installed new baseboards and limited my wall hangings to select animation cels (not a typo) 😊 and posters I pulled in from another room.
Future
upgrades will include having ethernet wall jacks installed in several
key areas of my house and purchasing a lightweight laptop (Microsoft
Surface perhaps?) for travel purposes that won't make me feel like I'm
lugging around a backpack full of bricks. Recommendations on good
quality yet affordable lightweight laptops are welcome.
Finally, I bought some relatively inexpensive yet great-looking office furniture including a wood/metal computer desk, matching finish wood storage cabinet, and, best of all, a comfortable office chair that smashes the thrift shop $6.00 special that's been killing my lower back and posterior for years.
While it took me way too long to start this project, it took less than a month to complete it and I couldn't be happier with the results.
Want to show off your writing space? Drop a pic and a brief description in the comments.
#homeoffice #writingspace #writer #author #animation #novels #writing #writingcommunity #fortressofwritertude
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Roger Eschbacher is an Emmy Nominated Freelance & Staff Writer, YA SciFi & Fantasy Author, Actor & Groundlings Alum. If you like SF/F adventure novels, feel free to check out his AMAZON AUTHOR PAGE. (affiliate link) Thanks!
