My desk is a GeekDesk, the kind that can be raised or lowered at the touch of a button. Standing, I can work all day long and not get tired. My keyboard is also of the ergonomic variety. In the last decade, I’ve used that keyboard to publish five books on Amazon and revise two editions of ‘The Chicago Manual of Style.’ (Thousands of documents now sit in the cloud, silent testament to it all.) The problem with my office is that I don’t have enough time to take advantage of everything else that it has to offer. All I want to do as I stand at my desk is to finish my work so I can sit in my recliner and listen to a favorite LP or CD or streaming audio selection through my conventional amplifier and four bookshelf speakers while reading a book or looking out the window and sipping on a beer from my mini fridge. I even have a copy of ‘The Beautiful and Damned’ should I choose to reread it for the fifth time. Not that I don’t enjoy reading on screen—it turned out that ‘War and Peace’ was made for my iPhone (the same ancient model that I used today to take this photograph)—but for the most part, it’s like this: my GeekDesk and my ergonomic keyboard and computer and all the electronic files are for work; my recliner and my paper books and old-fashioned stereo and well-stocked fridge offer an actual, physical taste of the good life. As I stand at my desk and work, I am surrounded by everything I would ever need. Even my little glass cat, perched next to my faithful mouse, can see that.– Russell Harper
Russell Harper has spent his entire career at the keyboard, where he has created or edited nearly every type of document, from bumper sticker to bibliography. He is the principal reviser for that apex of literary style guides, The Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition, published this fall), and he is the author of Bald (Scala House, 2005), a memoir of lost youth. Although most of his work these days is in Chicago, his desk is now in Ithaca, New York.
