By John Gilstrap

I have been blessed with nice offices my entire professional life. Not that I’ve always had an office job, or that my office jobs didn’t take me out into the field for many days out of the year, but when I was in town, in headquarters, I always had a door and walls. In several of my Big Boy jobs, I could look beyond my door to see other toiling in the cubical farm, but I’ve never had to endure the challenge of trying to concentrate in a crowd.

Ninety percent of the time, my door remained open, especially in my true safety engineering days, working at the explosives plant, because the open door encouraged drop-ins. “Hey, John, there’s a problem, I think, down at Building 240 . . .” On the flip side, the open door allowed me to catch in the hallway that person I needed to talk to who was never in his own office.

If my office door was closed–or is closed today–it’s a rare enough event that everyone knows I need to be alone. Back in the day, it could have been because of a personnel issue or a classified project, but now it’s because I’m in the Zone, or on a phone call or doing a YouTube video or Zoom meeting.

It’s no secret to anyone who knows me that I like comfort and I like my things. My stuff. Don’t get me wrong. I can be productive in a hotel room or sitting at a bar or in a coffee shop, but to feel at home, I want to feel special in my office space.

The office furniture I’d had for the past fifteen years or so was designed for a different time and for different priorities. My desk had a big cabinet for my tower computer and a slide out tray for my keyboard along with chases for a few cords. If I wanted to write with pen and paper–which I frequently do–I merely slid the keyboard into its slot and worked on the desk space. None of this affected the music I was listening to from the Bose CD player on the bookshelf.

Now, my laptop is my only computer. The keyboard tray is still the proper typing height, but I could no longer slide the tray in without closing the lid on the computer, which was also the source of the music or white noise I was listening to, not to mention the gateway to the internet research I needed to take notes on as I wrote by hand. It just didn’t work for me anymore, and after the move to West Virginia, the furniture didn’t really fit the space.

So, I designed myself a new office.

I like dark colors and I like the look of the hard surfaces. My old office provided just one horizontal surface and it was hard to access if I wanted to do anything by hand,. Here, the wrap-around design allows me to swing my chair around and have immediate access to more desk.

But let’s talks about some of the stuff.

This little guy never had a name but he was my childhood Teddy bear. One of my most prized possessions, he got me through some tough times.

On October 19, 1983 at 3:10pm, a contaminated batch of propellant for the Navy’s Standard Missile Program exploded about 400 yards from my office. The pressure wave blew in my window and collapsed my ceiling. This piece of shrapnel missed me.

While I was researching SIX MINUTES TO FREEDOM, President Bush invited Kurt Muse and me to Houston so that we could interview him for 20 minutes. We stayed for and hour and a half.

I was invited to teach a writing class to the military and civilians at Guantanamo. While there, I was interviewed by the base radio station, where I got a Fidel Castro bobblehead. The station motto is, “Rockin’ in Fidel’s Backyard.”

I’ve been trading Jonathan Grave challenge coins for a while now–long enough to put together a nice collection. Every one of those represents service to the nation or the community. It warms my heart to look at them.

A little daily encouragement from Dad.

And now, finally, time to go back to work.