Are any of you still there?
Believe it or not, I am still here, albeit quietly.
I could tell you I have been busy, I could tell you I have been traveling, I could tell you I was working and taking classes and trying to make friends in Homeland City.
Which would all be true.
So that's what I will tell you.
Earlier this Fall I decided that I needed to redo our bedroom. It was a fine bedroom, bedecked still with summer linens. But I just felt like it needed something more.
So of course what is a 21st century woman to do?
Scour Pinterest and all of these design blogs she follows incessantly and come up with some good plan.
Which is exactly what I did.
I had a lot of pictures of headboards on my Pinterest board, so I made one of those.
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| In progress. Obviously. |
And I knew winter was coming so I made a duvet cover to go over our down comforter. And I thought I should probably make a lot of mis-matched pillows. So I made 6 of those.
Because that's what people are doing now. 6 mis-matched pillows.
And I worked and worked and Pinterested and worked.
And I got the room done.
All put together.
It looked really nice.
But I didn't sigh a contented sigh of relief. Like the kind of sigh you make when you walk into your house. Which exceedingly puzzled me.
So for months we slept in a bedroom that didn't feel like home. Hubbs said he liked it, because he likes what I do. Which is so nice of him to say, and I know he meant it.
But was it really Hubbs and I? How could I have put so much work into something and not come away loving it?
Right before Thanksgiving I quit for a number of reasons my little part time job I had picked up, which put more time in my hands. So I filled my time with this project and that, taking some classes, etc.
But I started to have lonely days every now and again. Now, I am not one given to much loneliness. The Lord has blessed with a great multitude of friends. So I was surprised when this feeling hit. But, you know, it's different when you have friends but none of them live by you.
And none of my friends lived in Homeland City.
So I was lonely.
Around Christmas time I started to realize about our bedroom that I didn't really like it. Yes, it was trendy. Yes, it was pretty. Yes, I had seen all kinds of pictures that looked just like it.
And that was the problem. It occurred to me that I had designed our bedroom not to be a haven and a place of retreat for Hubbs and I, but I designed it to look like HER bedroom.
HER being the hundreds of unnamed bloggers and Pinteresters I had gone to for inspiration. Or, dare I say it: copied.
I was appalled at myself. How could I be so influenced? Me, Little Miss Projects, copying someone else, not coming up with my own ideas, not following my gut?
I knew right then and there I had to stop it. I had to stop looking to them for inspiration, I had to cut these un-met women out of my life. I couldn't let their voice over rule mine.
In a flash of tyranny of the urgent, and I am almost too embarrassed to admit it, one weekend I spent like 6 hours deleting pictures off my Pinterest house board.
Oh. My.
I am sure Hubbs thought I was nuts as he would hear me saying, "What was I thinking?!?!? I DON'T LIKE BATHROOMS PAINTED BLACK!!! Who do I think I am?!??!?!????"
But alas, the board got de-cluttered and I realized those things I really do like. Not because someone else told me to like them, but because I have liked them all along (more often than not I have liked those types of things since I was 8 when I started reading Better Home and Gardens and drawing blue prints).
But to my surprise something else occurred to me other than I needed to pair down our bedroom: I was even more lonely than before.
Have you ever had a situation that makes you go, "Hmmmmmm.........."? Well this was precisely one of those.
How could not following designers on blogs and Instagram make me feel even more lonely?
And then I knew. Not only had I been so influenced, so peer-pressured, by all of these owners of houses I copied, but I had also been using them to fill a void. In their absence I realized that I had been filling some of my lonely hours with keeping up with their lives. Following the growth milestones of their kids. Living vicariously through their travels.
And not doing that with the people I actually KNOW and love.
So not only was I lonely in Homeland City, but I was filling up "social hours" I could have been at least on the phone with best girl friends who don't live here hearing about THEIR travels and THEIR kids' milestones.
It makes me wonder if this is the pandemic of today's society and I fell prey to it too: Lonely in a time of easy connections to hundreds of "people," but not really knowing anyone you could just call up to grab coffee with.
It's a sad place to be.
So I am stopping it.
I am trying to reach out and be a friend again.
And I took down some of the art on our bedroom wall. And now I sigh a little easier when I walk in.
OH! And in other news.......................Coming Spring, we're joining the club.
