The Office

Generally, I work from bed, but that’s “kind of disgusting” and “unhealthy” and “terrible for sleep hygiene” and “How are there so many crumbs on my side of bed, Ciara? This teacup on my pillow wasn’t quite empty when you put it there, and don’t tell me again how tea is a clean stain. Why are you like this?”

So shame moves me to my home-office, the

‘L’ bit on the L-shaped couch that’s stacked with foam cot mattresses and cheap breastfeeding pillows and yoga bolsters, such that it resembles a kind of trash-throne for a supine shit-queen. Which feels about right.

But it’s amazing how much distraction that small, soft area offers, and how capable I am of getting absolutely nothing done in six straight hours there.

So, in desperation, I will put on a bra, change from my home-tracksuit to my outside-tracksuit, take off my bra again because it hurts, and Jesus Christ do people wear these every day, and anyway I’ve a large fleece on over my light fleece, so it’s probably fine — I head to a cafe.

I eat weird pastries that stick in my guilty throat because of all the perfectly good food I have at home, and I’m not even that hungry, anyway. It’s difficult to get into any kind of flow because I constantly have the underlying anxiety that it might be time to buy something again, lest the 20-year-old barista think I’m taking the piss.

And even when I find a coffee shop where I don’t feel like an imposter,

I have to switch it up, because if there’s one thing I loathe, it’s being a regular. I don’t want someone finishing my sentences when I’m ordering my lunch. It’s too intimate. And besides, I think I need that kind of judgmental presence that feels like accountability

— when the barista strays into the ‘friendly acquaintance’ territory, I can’t project my own self-loathing on to them and use it spur on my word count. Comfort and relaxation is the enemy of productivity.