“My desk is located against a wall on the 22nd floor of the Condé Nast building in Times Square.  The metallic mesh walls that encase the space contain the sum of my workplace personal effects. To my left, I hung two printed-out photos (Rod Blagojevich shaking his fist and Michael Jackson sitting with E.T.); to my right, a Condé Nast company calendar from 2009 that, in fairness, was here when I was assigned to the desk. Lately, though, I’ve come to regard my decision to keep it hanging as something of a personal aesthetic choice. There also used to be a black and white striped hatbox next to the wheels of my chair. For six months, it was content to sit on a box of printer cartridges until one day it followed me home.

The surface of the desk, an anemic seafoam green, is obscured by souvenirs from long-ago meetings: schedules, sheets of statistics, and style guidelines. I’ve also been sent several books from publishers, and many such titles are now stacked underneath my telephone and piled by a packet of sunflower seeds in the corner of the desk. Their ranks include Christ Enlightened: The Lost Teachings of Jesus Unveiled and The Ground Truth: The Untold Story of America Under Attack on 9/11. (I have no current plans to read either one.) There are also three or four Vanity Fair notepads, all of which have fifty or so words of scribbled black cursive on their top pages and no others. I keep my desk cluttered with the carrion of neglected pursuits because I like the idea of physically and intellectually abandoning the disorder when I go home. Its nightly absence is more fully felt because of its daily presence.”

Juli Weiner is the author of a Twitter feed of the same name. She blogs for Vanity Fair and Juli O’Clock. She lives in the East Village with her hatbox.