Five Years a Writer

This is a tale of four ears, two minds, one set of earbuds with microphone, and several assumptions. I’ve been working from home since mid-March 2020. Val and I live in a small house, in which we have knocked down several walls to create an open-plan living space. There is no private office on the main floor; nor is there, come to think of it, a private office on the lower level, aka, the basement. Therefore, I have been using a back corner of the living room as my office space and it has been going swimmingly — until recently, when I took on a short-term teaching contract that required me to, well, teach online. Not just work online, but actively teach a group of students through the screen. What’s the issue, you ask? Well, noise, actually. Before, a simple workday of desk work and meetings was a non-event; Val and I both just went about our business in our small house, managing around each other’s schedules. But when I began the teaching contract, noise became an issue. Specifically,