A note from our member and author: Robyn White

Robyn White is a Self-Leadership Coach for Executives & Entrepreneurs and Author of Three Permissions. Here’s her reflection on space, ritual, and the quiet recognition of where your work truly belongs.

Dear Jen,

I have worked in a lot of places.

I have staffed a teller line and stood behind a retail counter. I have shared a ministry office, a classroom, a stage. Most of my working life, I’ve shown up in spaces that weren’t really mine. I did meaningful work. I was fully there. But I was always stepping into something that already belonged to someone else.You may know that feeling. You’re present, but not quite rooted.

I have a room now. Room 304 at Connects Workspace in Genesee, tucked into the front range with the mountains somewhere in my peripheral awareness and, from my particular window, a stand of evergreens and a private drive. The ceilings vault. The light is good. The walls are bare because I haven't personalized it yet, though I look forward to that process the way I look forward to any good design conversation. For now it is a desk, a chair, a trash can, and me. And something is different when I work here.

I have been trying to understand what that something is. It is not the view, which is honest rather than grand. It is not the amenities, though I appreciate the communal kitchen where I fill my water bottle and make my tea before settling in. It is not even the quiet, because a coworking space is not quiet exactly - it is alive with the particular hum of other people doing their own meaningful work nearby.

What I realized, sitting in this plain and light-filled room, is that I needed this not as a credential for anyone else. I have the title, the certifications, the clients, the book on a shelf somewhere. What I needed was for something external to confirm what was already true internally, the way a room can do that when all the other things cannot. It feels legitimizing in the most interior sense of the word. Not I have arrived in some public way. More like: oh, so this is where I do my work. This is the place that holds it. I think it is the ritual of beginning.

Every morning when I arrive, I greet the people around me, walk into the office, plug in my computer, and adjust the desk to the height I want. Then I walk to the kitchen, fill my water bottle, make my cup of tea, and return to 304. I didn't design this sequence deliberately. It simply became the way I begin. And somewhere in that small ceremony - the greeting, the plug-in, the desk height, the tea - something in me crosses over. From scattered to settled. From wherever I was to here.

What I've realized is that the room didn't create that ritual. It revealed it. Having a distinct place to arrive at made me notice what I was already doing, already needing. And I think that matters for all of us, whether we work from a dedicated office, a kitchen table, or a corner of the bedroom. The threshold isn't the door. It's the moment you choose to begin. The room just made mine visible to me.

What I also didn't anticipate was the way spring would arrive alongside it. A new season, a new space, a new chapter all converging at once, and the particular quality of light that combination creates. Everything feels a little crisper, a little more possible. Not the forced optimism of a resolution, but the real, quiet brightness of something genuinely opening up.

My daughters gave me a book once, during the long labor of writing Three Permissions, a collection of photographs and essays about the spaces where well-known writers did their work. I loved it because I have always loved the inside story, not just what was made, but where, and in what light. Most of those rooms were plain. Some were impractical. Some were even mobile. But they were claimed, and the claiming made the work more possible.

Room 304 is still bare. But it is mine, in the way that matters. And this bright, beginning season has me wondering what you are stepping into, and what ritual of beginning is already yours, waiting to be noticed.

Have you noticed yours?