A moment of Mancave bliss
Last week my wife and son left to go spend some time with grandma and grandpa back in Moldova.
And even though I miss them both a lot, I cannot say I don’t mind having had some time to just be alone.
I’m not used to silence anymore. I have gotten used to a life of constant noise, family hustle and bustle, work and distraction.
So when I walked into my trusted second home (my office) on a Saturday at 15.00 it was a moment of absolute bliss.
The sunshine was hitting my office window, there was nobody in the entire 13 store building, and I had all the time in the world.
I sat behind my piano and wiped off a thin layer of dust that had been collecting on the cover.
I hit a couple keys softly and stared out the window into a city center filled with people that were going places.
Those that have visited my office, will tell you it either feels like a second living room or a messy storage unit.
It’s filled with memorabilia from many years of entrepreneurship and after I had to give up my work room in my home for the baby room, my office slowly turned into my Mancave.
Today I want to reflect why this Mancave is so much more to me than just an office space where I store my furniture.
To me it is a rare place where I can be myself and let my thoughts go.
So why did I need something like this? Why would I pay rent in the middle of the city for this? And how on earth is this linked to my identity as an entrepreneur?
Huge office
Back when I was in this same building with Funk-e, before it become a co-working space, we used to rent almost the entire top floor, all 800 square meters.
I would always joke that I didn’t need an office for myself, and that I would sit wherever everyone else was sitting.
In those days my identity was pretty much intertwined with my company. I would spend most of my waking hours working and the entire office was basically one huge playground for 25 year old Alex.
As the years moved on however, this slowly changed.
Where I felt we were a family building something together, people just did what they always do: they moved on with their lives, as they should.
I was however left cleaning everything up. Literally taking the entire office space apart (all 800 square meters) when for instance COVID hit, and we decided to get rid of most of our office space.
In that moment I felt very alone all of a sudden. I felt I had no place that would carry my memories of what we had built anymore, and suddenly all the office equipment didn’t feel like a living room anymore, but it just felt like cold lifeless furniture.
Separating church and state
When I had set out to leave Funk-e and I decided to get my own office, I decided to put my own company name (Mister Awesome, which is literally just Me, Myself and I) on the glass wall of my 20 square meter office.
I realised I had made a mistake to let my previous company absorb so much of who I was.
The place we worked in meant way more to me than it did to anyone else. And once it was gone, I was the only one feeling down.
That’s why as soon as I got my own office (and nobody else’s) I was very glad to have found a place for all my favourite things.
I could finally fill it with musical instruments, film making equipment, video games, skateboards, anything I felt like.
Clearly having a space that is mine, even though it comes at a price, is something that really matters to me.
Even though we use the space for meetings with superconnectors, I do keep reminding everyone that this is my personal office.
Once we grow enough we will get a separate space for superconnectors, but for now the team is welcome to crash in my Mancave.
