Why we cowork — an ongoing saga

Funny how extremes often overlap, resulting in a Venn Diagram of irony. Chrissie Hynde and the Pretenders sang, It’s a thin line between love and hate. Now, I’m not going to get that melodramatic (though I do love Chrissie). But it is funny how opposites often are attracted to the same concept.

For instance—there are a lot of hardcore conservatives that home school their kids. Too, there are a lot of other home schooling folks who lean so far to the left that they make that Tower of Pisa look ramrod straight.

In the end, both groups share the same goal: they don’t want other people or government entities defining what their kids’ education should be. So while you might not find these two groups sitting down at one big happy table together, there’s definite overlap.

Similarly, coworking attracts equally opposite groups. I know this firsthand because I’ve lived on both sides of the fence. There are those desperately seeking a clean, well-lighted, quiet, ergonomically-sensical place to get stuff done. And then there are those hoping to catch a buzz, by which I mean a buzz that is neither caffeine nor booze related. No, these folks want the buzz of working around other people. And maybe they want some audible buzz, too, some background sound.

I raised my son on my own, juggling parenting and self-employment for many years. Most often we lived in places so small that the kitchen or my bedroom doubled as my office. I’d steal work time wherever I could, often sacrificing my own sleep to work after he’d gone to bed because it was just too distracting to accomplish much when he was awake. Then, when he was older, I’d do what I could to block out his Jimi Hendrix aspirations, which filled the house with loud electric guitar riffs (which I loved but which weren’t conducive to getting writing done.) My rare escapes to coffee shops, even if there was a lot of background noise, felt like quiet sanctuary by comparison.

Now my son is a young adult living on his own. It’s just me and the dogs and cats and they don’t talk much. I have a separate office in my house, and it’s a lovely space. The quiet is good a lot of the times. But sometimes I just need to get out and be around other people. I don’t need them to chat me up or critique my work. I just need the energy of other humans, the sounds of them tapping away at their keyboards as I tap away at mine, so I don’t go bonkers.

Ergo, I am the personification of the LaunchPad Venn Diagram, now defining as pleasant bustle what I used to think of as blessed quiet.