I have a new study. It is not large – but not that small either. For example, it fits me, my desk, and my books (my lovely, real paper books) neatly, and with room to swing around in my chair. I had hopes of a meditation corner, but that might become a meditation cushion, which can be squirrelled away next to my future shelves.

I have hopes of whiteness, cleanliness (in the sense of: blank spaces, open palates, free movement, excitingly understated decor). I have hopes of cosiness, familiar clutter – my papers where I left them, not too long ago so as to seem insistent; my desk top clear of all things but what I need for just today. I have tucked my filing cabinet out of line of sight so I do not feel I have to stand upon two headlands at once.

Importantly: everything placed just where I put it. Everything that speaks to me. Everything that fills a certain little cup in my gut I had no idea was empty: full of a smiling contentment, a snuggly, cat-like cushionness, which says: this is my place. Close the door (there is no door yet, but soon, soon!) Leave it all behind; all that which you didn’t even know you carried with you. At the door. Check it in. In here you have: you, your books and your unfinished thoughts, and your desk: and what are all these, but the luxuriant knowledge that in here you only have yourself to grapple with and answer to? In here your thoughts are your own, and about no one else. In here you can day dream, imagine spending lavishly on clean white desk tops; in here you can jot, and debate, and wonder, and calculate, and write.

In here you have only yourself, and what this room has inside of it is you.