What My Desk Looked Like Before and After I Stopped Trying to Make It Look 'Aesthetic'

For a while my desk looked like something out of a moodboard. Matching notebooks stacked at the same angle. A candle I never lit, because lighting it would melt the top and ruin the shape for the next photo. A plant I kept alive just enough to photograph, not enough to actually enjoy.

Every pen was color coordinated. None of them were the pen I actually reach for.

I built that desk for a camera angle, not for my own hands. It looked considered from four feet away and completely unusable up close.

Then I stopped. Not all at once. I just got tired of moving everything back into position every time I actually used the desk for something.

Now there’s a coffee mug from yesterday I keep meaning to move. My actual water bottle, the one with the sticker half peeled off, not the glass one I bought for photos. Papers in a pile that makes sense to me and no one else. A notebook that’s actually full instead of empty and pretty.

It’s not aesthetic. It’s mine. And somehow I get more done at the desk that looks like a mess than I ever did at the one that looked like a magazine spread.

The desk that photographed well was never the one I actually worked at.