I sold my desk this week for $75.
I put it on Craigslist, first for $300, then for $200, then for $100. Somebody offered me $50 and we settled on $75. I even delivered the desk across town in my truck for that.
And then I came home and cried.
Emotions run deep when you part with something that has been a big part of your life for so long. I remember when my friend and business partner Mike Yaconelli and I went to an office furniture store in downtown San Diego to buy that desk about 35 years ago. We were moving Youth Specialties to a new location in El Cajon and since I was going to have a nice big office, I needed a nice big desk. We picked out an impressive, solid oak executive desk that cost more than $2000. It was an extravagant expenditure for a fledgling company like ours but we were dreamers and we were dreaming big.
About five years later when Youth Specialties had grown and we had more employees than we had space to put them all, I decided to build an office over my garage at home. After all, Mike had moved his office to Yreka, California which was over 400 miles away. There was no reason I couldn’t move mine to Lakeside, which was only about 5 miles away.
Eventually I left Youth Specialties and I didn’t take much with me … except that desk. It has been my place of work for more than three decades. And because I consider work and worship to be pretty much the same thing (which is Biblical, by the way), in a very real sense that desk has been my altar. I gave God my best every single day at that desk. It is stained with blood, sweat and tears.
But now the desk is gone.
I sold it because we are planning to move to a new home soon, one that won’t have room for a big desk like mine. We are downsizing.
Marci understood my tears and tried to console me. She knew it wasn’t just a desk. I’m glad it’s now going to be used again. The young man who bought it plans to refinish the top and get another 30 years out of it.
Not bad for only $75.