Guarding My Office Privacy
/Our home office is filled with my stuff. I have a white board filled with article ideas, phrases I heard that I liked and might want to use someday, reminder notes, tasks to be done, etc. I have a huge wall calendar with deadline dates circled in red and mini-completion dates inked in green. I have a stack of books on writing the perfect novel, the perfect query letter, the perfect book proposal (writers are big on the perfect "something"). I have my file folders set up with client names printed neatly on each label. To my immediate left there is a cork board where I have inspirational quotes posted, my 2007 goals for the year (including my monetary goals), a marathon-training schedule, postcards from friends, and websites I might find useful.
In short, to sit at my desk is to get an immediate sense of who I am and what I'm about. Which is why at the moment I'm feeling kind of creeped out based on the fact I let someone else sit in the space.
It's no big deal. Our designer needed to check e-mail and the B&B we had her in didn't have wi-fi. So we offered our computer to her. Only after she left did it occur to me that my goals for the year were listed in full sight, my half-baked article titles were chalked on the board...
For better or worse, I try very hard to present a "finished" picture of myself to the world, and I am left feeling so unsettled that someone saw "behind the curtain" as it were, to my hopes and not really thought through plans. It gives me a creepy-crawly feeling to think about it.
Anyone else out there private like that? Or do you not care who sees or knows almost anything about you?