All work and no play makes Jane a very, very dull person (but she still loves her job)…

Right, before I get started this week, two important and completely unrelated points. Firstly, it is now less than two weeks until my Birthday and I am beginning to worry that my hubby hasn’t made any plans for ‘my fabulous Birthday weekend’ – if you are reading this Davy, sort it out… secondly, I have been profiled once again in idfx (the industry bible for the interior design industry) – they asked me to write an article about the Hotel Puerta America, which was the subject of one of my previous blogs… so it would appear that this blogging thing does work (hence the deliberate comment directed at my hubby to get the Birthday plans sorted)… Anyway, back to my inspirational images of the month feature – this is where I focus very simply on the things that mean something to me and the inspirational words and images that reflect aspects of my own personal style.

I was sat nicely in my studio yesterday and it struck me that I have been so super busy in recent months that this is where I am spending nearly all of my time (when not on client site, visiting suppliers or spending quality time with my dog – he’s too big now to be classified as a puppy and he farts unapologetically all the time like a grown up man) – it also struck me that I really do need to tidy up a bit in here and find a way of getting my husband to move his drum kit to somewhere else in the house(and, to be frank, it’s got to the point where I really don’t care where the bl00dy things end up). I was also reflecting on my change of career and the deliberate move out of the City that was meant to reduce the amount of time that I spend working and, as a consequence, the amount of time that I spend operating at heightened stress levels… Hmmmmmm, given current commitments, not sure that this has been successful 100% of the time… But then, in a genuine moment of epiphany, I realised that in reality (and when compared to my life in the City before) everything is completely different now… and while continuing to intellectualise this further and reflecting fondly on the works of all the great philosophers to ascribe some meaning to this apparent conundrum, I remembered the following quote, a quote that I have thought deeply about for many years when meditating and a quote that I believe in totally - “choose a job you love and you will never have to work a day in your life”…

…ok, you can either believe that hugely convincing version of recent events or the frankly less believable alternative – I was sat nicely in my studio, drinking a cup of tea and eating a drumstick lolly, furiously scouring the Worldwide Interweb for a vaguely relevant quote to include in my blog this week… and this is what I landed on…

Work and ambition has been a pervasive theme in my life to date - after graduating from Oxford I worked in the City as a media strategy consultant. Seven years in I got the itch and after reading Paulo Coelho’s tale about following your dreams, (The Alchemist), I promptly left my job, went back to college to retrain as a designer and amounted a not insubstantial amount of debt – to date, it is widely acknowledged that this is probably the most expensive book my husband has ever bought me (but he maintains that it did achieve the desired outcome). It has all paid off in the end - after graduating top of the school, I have been fortunate enough to build my experience with a number of the top interior design studios in the UK and have used this as a platform to set up my own business. The reason for all the background (or ‘the sob story’) is that as a small business owner I spend almost every waking hour working – you have to accept that when you are busy you just have to run with it – it is 6.09am as I write this blog and I have been up working at this time (or earlier) every morning for at least the last two months. I also still seem to be working at 11.09pm every night (and at the weekend too). But I have to say that for the vast majority of time, I really don’t feel like I am working and I definitely don’t resent the opportunity that I have been given (although it would be nice to earn a bit more money – still not on a par with where I was when I was in the City…). I am passionate about what I do now, I absolutely love it and hence the quote from Confucious really rings true for me… another upside (apparently) is that my husband gets to go to the pub more often and watch a lot of sport on TV…


After all that ‘deep and meaningful’, back to the purpose of this week’s blog - and it isn’t to gloat about the fact that I have found a career that I adore… when I started writing very early this morning I only wanted to share a few images of inspirational workspaces that I love – it is clear that I must have wanted to get all of this off my chest… Anyway, work is, for most of us, a necessary evil – so, my simple advice is to continue on your relentless quest to find the vocation that you love and, irrespective of what you do, recognise that you deserve to work in a space that makes you feel comfortable and happy… I’ll stop short of launching into a rant about Warr’s Vitamin Model of Mental Health or Jahoda’s Primary Environmental Influences and the consequential impact on the workplace and well being. Pontificating wildly about philosophy is quite enough for one blog.

(Image from vtwonen.nl)

(Image from lamaisondannag)

(Image from French By Design) 

(Image from www.skonahem.com)