One of the top priorities when moving to Brooklyn was to have more space, particularly to have dedicated workspace. In our previous apartment, my office was a corner of the bedroom, which I was grateful to have, but also over time resentful. I love my work and my job (probably a litle too much), but seeing my workspace as the first thing upon waking and the last before sleep made it hard for my brain to rest. (It wasn’t nearly as draining as sleeping on a twin bed in a call room in the corner of a patient ward with my pager on my chest, though, like I used to have to do during my surgery training, which is always helpful to recall for perspective.)

Anyway, one of my many pandemic hobbies, after getting over the initial shock of having my own office space, has been tweaking the office setup. This is what it currently looks like:

A dark and liminal room with a deep green wall on which hangs a fake white deer head with gold antlers; on the desk is a computer setup with a glowing, backlit monitor and mechanical keyboard

Current setup

It’s kind of like the dark mode version of my previous setup, which looked something like this:

An office setup in the naturally-lit corner of a bright room with white wall. An open Macbook Pro and computer monitor sit on the writing desk, with various other stationery items scattered about

Previous setup

Here’s a close-up of my custom mechanical keyboard, which was a sub-hobby of this hobby:

Closeup of a mechanical keyboard with multicolor LED lights and a cute colorful coiled aviator USB cable

Keyboard