At the end of 2025, my desk tells a familiar work-from-home story, part writing station, part cat furniture, and somehow still functional.
It's been another year completed here at 0440-industries, which is kind of a brand name I've recently started using. Everyone needs a personal brand right? Mine is a mixture of the Borg and Alice in Wonderland.
I started to keep a journal in 2013 in Apple Notes and gradually moved through multiple journaling apps over the years. I like Apple Journal's handling of text, images/videos, audio notes, drawings, mental health checks via Apple Health, music, etc.
I've used Journal a lot more in 2025 and my perspective towards the practice changed. In the past I mostly treated an entry like an end-of-the-day log, but lately I've been creating a short entry every time I have something I want to remember.
It's a personal social network where I'm talking to various versions of me through time.
My regular writing desk. If clutter piles up it gets moved and sorted.
A journal entry could be a picture of a meal with cooking notes, a joke I thought of, poetry, or anything else. Little updates throughout the day to maintain neural continuity and achieve digital immortality.
Since I work from home it's hard to avoid the fact that my work space and home space are the same thing. For example, I have a nice wooden desk in my bedroom, as well as a shelf that I occasionally use as a standing desk.
My couch can also be a work space, especially in the afternoon. I took a photo of my desk and the standing desk/shelf. However, my working space section of my ugly couch is an exception — no photos there. That's writing-in-your-pajamas space.
A shelf that I occasionally use as a standing desk.
Other than a few knick-knacks, I don't lean into aesthetics much. Most things are there for a reason, like a bottle of rubbing alcohol for cleaning device displays. And that wine bottle turned water bottle that should be on the cover of Vogue.
The cardboard box is my art toolbox with pens, pencils, and Sharpies. I'm not great at drawing but I send handwritten letters and sketches to my niece and nephew. And my desk is the perfect spot for that.
Which, by the way, since this is a tour of the desk, I'd like to give a shout out to my sister and her husband, and said niblings. They gave that desk to me in 2016 I think, just found it on the side of the road one day. Free to a good home, kitten named Oliver.
Ninja, resident panther, reviews boxes
The standing desk is really just a shelf that came pre-installed in the apartment. But this one is the perfect level to comfortably type on. I have decorations to make it look like a tiny office space, including a tiny water bottle.
And I did comfortably type my way through the year. The iPhone Air I bought is a boon to the phone-addicted, although I'm mostly on my iPad Pro.
My MacBook Air is a nice backup to have because there's always that 0.1 percentage that the iPad can't do.
I like my AirPods Pro 3, they're the only pair I've had that actually does the "automatic switching between devices" feature correctly. Right now I'm listening to 1970s lounge music from the background music toggle in Control Center. It's the one where you're sitting in a conversation pit.
Background Sounds has powered many a writing session, such as all of the infostealer Mac malware that surfaced over the year. And there was Liquid Glass, although I'm not a loud complainer of that.
Over the course of the year, I tossed countless cat toys for chasing and got just as many scratches. The cat bed beneath my desk sees occasional use when I'm in another workspace.
But he doesn't use it when I'm working. We're more like roommates and he's not into normal cat behavior like cuddling.
Anyway, that's a wrap to finish another year writing for AppleInsider. I like working here and I'm grateful that I can work at home.
Although I suppose that creates a paradox — Am I living in a workspace or working in a livespace?
