Don’t let the demise of a string of downtown restaurants get you down. I will miss the Bell Pepper salad and the Stockpot soup. I never did sample the upscale Victory Restaurant, but rumor has it that a new collection of eateries is on the way. From a purely Darwinian view, Portsmouth diners still have an enormous selection to choose from. And the harsh truth is that companies come and companies go. I know. I had my share of downtown offices. All of those buildings are still there, filled with new companies, but I am gone – and happier for it. (Continued below)   

A New Lease on Life

I used to write videotape scripts, slide shows, brochures and speeches. Now I am a history writer, and one thing a writer needs is a private place to work. The history writer, especially, needs to spread out stacks of research for long periods of time in an undisturbed area. Sometimes, while happily working in my office, my mind drifts back to a time when I worked with others.

It confounds me now when people complain about their stressful jobs and their wasted lives at work. I remember, distantly, what it was like to have someone dumber telling me what to do all day. I vaguely recall the clock watching and the pencil stealing, the annual review, timed lunches and jockeying for parking spaces. Then back in 1982 my roommate moved out and I turned his half of a downtown third-floor Portsmouth apartment into an office. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do for a living, but I knew that my days as a hamster were over.

I’ve had six offices since, one in Dover and five in Portsmouth. I did different things along the way, even had my own hamsters for a time. I’ve never written a resume or had a boss since, but I have always kept an office and I have loved every one. If you’re going to spend a quarter of your life asleep and another half at work, what else makes sense? If I ruled the world all workers would have their own exclusive room with a door, a key, a wet bar and a private bath. Think of it as upscale communism. Slackers would be shipped off to the gulag – an open bullpen with lots of desks and phones and a single water cooler. Perhaps you work there already.

I worked and lived for almost a decade at 88 Pleasant Street smack downtown. For years I kept eight rooms on the top floor, four of them converted to a garret office where I employed one part time secretary. The rent was $250 per month. Later I rented most of the second and third floor of a huge concrete addition to the same building that looked out through tiny windows to the Unitarian Church. It was thousands of square feet that I sublet for peanuts to a circus of creative companions – writers, photographers, artists, movie makers.

When the landlord raised the rent we split en masse to a second floor office in Dover. When that landlord raised the rent we moved back to 62 Congress Street, sharing a two-story windowed office condo with Fishtraks recording studio. My next office was on State Street next door to Savario’s Pizza. Then I rented the carriage house at the Portsmouth Historical Society further down the same street.

The few who have visited my seventh office usually whistle and say something like, "Sweet. I would love a space of my own like this." They say it as if some immutable force has shackled them to their toilsome workspace. They are victims of fate, slaves to a mortgage or responsible members of society. Some wear their grueling vocation like a badge. "No pain, no gain," they say, and fantasize about weekends, vacations and retirement years to come.

My current office, for the record, isn’t much by executive standards. It used to be a lop-sided one-car garage papered in faux-brick asbestos shingles. For the price of an SUV I had it converted to a comfortable room just off the little garden behind my little house. It has its own heat, electrical service and cable modem. The computer area sets up about two feet on a platform with a surrounding desk made of birch, about twice the size of Dilbert’s cubicle. The space below is twice that size again with a wall of books, a couch, three windows, air conitioner, a ceramic stove, two chairs and a long high worktable. My only office mates are an elderly boom-box and a petite young DVD player. We get along famously.

This is not technically a "home office". I’ve tried that numerous times with little luck. Working in a spare bedroom, for me, is like working in a spare bedroom. I need to leave the house and enter a separate world. The IRS likes that arrangement better too. With a separate dedicated space, things are always where I leave them. I can work in silence all day or curse and play rock music all night. No one imports germs. No one exports stolen pencils. Asked to sketch the perfect place to work, I’d draw myself sitting right here.

Working alone isn’t for everyone. People who are addicted to a regular paycheck, for example, should stick to traditional employment. Others prefer the security of a title, job description, retirement plan, healthcare benefits and clearly defined goals. Some actually enjoy the camaraderie of their fellow workers and the heady sense of power and accomplishment that comes from teamwork. Many are simply shut out of the solo office life due to specialized training as football players, neurosurgeons, coal miners, reference librarians and exotic dancers.

I know lots of independent people who don’t work in an office. That’s not what I’m about. I need the office. Writers and artists make a living thinking outside the box. But they still need the box as a frame of reference. The office focuses and stabilizes and houses all that energy. It is the cave, the tree house, the Fortress of Solitude, the Holy of Holies.

The first six offices were leased. This one is mine, or will be in another four years. People used to ask how I dared to quit the rat race and brave the road not taken. I used to tell them that it was a lot like quitting any distasteful habit. One day you just don’t show up at the factory. Then you repeat that day forever. Now that I am older and my friends are retiring from steady jobs with IRAs and pensions, they tend not to ask the question any more. They have begun to ask, instead, if it was worth the added struggle and expense just to work alone. Yes, I can say without hesitation. If I end up working alone until my dying day, I wouldn’t trade the freedom for a real job in someone else’s office.

 Copyright © 2009 by J. Dennis Robinson. All rights reserved.