Home Features Every Newly (Un)Retired Couple Wants
Diana Landau | April 11, 2022
This is a “love letter” from my wife Diana about her experience with me moving my office home.
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Cone of Silence—That’s right, Get Smart style. Just press a button and you can have actual phone conversations without your partner “interjecting” with helpful opinions.
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Padded Room—Not for your partner, but for yourself. Sometimes sharing the home 24/7 is all a bit too much.
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The True Divider—This is an actual wall constructed down the middle of your one office that you have to share. Matching shelving on each side for storing YOUR very important mementos and vital personal items that your partner erroneously states are “junk.”
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Kitchen Sweeper—Not for your floors, but for your kitchen counters where partner has left remnants of lunch, part-time work papers, backpack full of pickleballs and lots of notes written in tiny scribble that not even the cat can decipher.
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Private Sanctuary—Uh, a certain partner uses this term for the bathroom. Whatever.
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Discerning Doorbell—this features a speaker that says loudly, firmly yet politely, “Go Away!” for those times when neither of you want to get up and see who’s at the door.
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Living Room—This area is actually your new office/sanctuary. As you talk on the phone, you look at the walls and imagine them padded. (See #2 above.)
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Sports Viewing Room—It’s actually outside. Well, ok, the man or woman cave in the garage, but please, just outside.
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Pet Throne—With all the extra time you two have now, you both spend an inordinate amount of time fawning over the pet(s). Perfect, fluffy, organic, silk pillow for Fido? Yes, Amazon!
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Outsized Wine Rack—This feature becomes critical to survival and civility as time goes on.
Moving to Another New Office! Really?
Carl Landau | November 16, 2020
OK, my "office-moving" strategy is probably counterintuitive. Most people aren't working in offices these days. Or they are trying to get out of their leases. But in a month I'm moving to probably the 15th office I've rented over the past 30+ years. Does this make any sense?
It does for a weirdo like me! I know that everyone seems to love working at home but I have never liked it. (It's too tempting to get distracted and have access to a real refrigerator!) Plus, I like a separation between my work and personal life. I also think my wonderful wife enjoys the peace and quiet with me out of the house. Another advantage is we both have something to talk/complain about at the end of each day.
Economically, does moving repeatedly make sense? Isn't it expensive with all that moving and a waste of energy? Couldn't I have just bought an office building by now? Yes and yes and yes!
But I just figured out what I really like about it all. It gives me a totally different view on life. I'm in a totally different section of town. Different restaurants around me. New places to explore on my breaks. I have different biz neighbors and literally a different view from my desk. And It's way easier than moving my house, which I never want to do.
It's the same reason I don't want a second home--because I don't want to just keep going to the same place over and over. I want to travel to as many places (post-pandemic) and meet as many different people and engage with as many different cultures as I can.
So, yeah -- I'm probably the only person in America today looking for a new office space. This is the "Carl America Stimulus Package" to bring back the economy!
