Gray 3

Much of my stress and the cause of many grays comes from the pressure on me to be creative and artistic.  My father is an architect and my mother is an artist.  My oldest brother is a writer and artist, and my other brother, while his professional world doesn’t revolve around it, is also very talented and creative, mostly it seems with photography.  I’m not saying I don’t think of myself as an artist, I do consider myself an artist and talented designer.  I guess most of the pressure I place on myself, based on a need for approval, sort of like, “hey look what I made.”  I’m not going to get into the whole thing about my dad being an architect and I wanted to be one, but he didn’t support my interest because he didn’t think I was good enough, because looking back on it now, he really had no basis for thinking that because he had no idea what I was capable or not capable of at the time.  It is what it is, and I’m happy being an interior designer, and I’m very good at what I do.  Okay, I got into it a little bit, but I’m not going to make a huge deal out of it because I’m over it, well mostly anyway. 

I’m not thrilled with the way my career began.  I really struggled to find work as a designer, and it was so hard to show a good portfolio without having had any jobs.  I was not very confident in myself at the time, and really had no support or guidance finding work.  Now I have created a niche for myself in the kitchen and bath design world and now know what I am aiming to achieve in my professional career. 

All of that aside, I love to do small home improvement projects.  I rent my apartment, but I’ve lived there for almost 14 years so I’ve taken it upon myself to do a lot of projects around the house myself instead of asking the landlord to do things.  This has a lot to do with being an interior designer and people expecting my place to be very cool.  I have a lot of great ideas and intentions, but my execution of my work leaves a lot to be desired, to say the least.  Also, the pace at which I’m working, makes it a never ending project, because I’ll paint something like the walls of a room, and I’ll love the color and then maybe 5 years later I’ll paint something else in the room and then I’ll find I want to change the wall color again. 

Here’s a prime example.  Eight years ago I painted my entire apartment in rich deep colors, and the dining room is now a midnight blue.  First of all, it’s a messy paint job that I never tidied up.  This past year I started painting my dining room chairs lime green.  They actually look really good.  I like the color combination a lot, so I started painting a pattern in a light lime green on one of the walls in the room.  I never finished the pattern, so it looks weird and unfinished now, not to mention that I’ve only painted 3 out of the 4 chairs so far.  Now I want to paint the walls a less intense blue color.  I’ve also decided this past week to take up the carpet in that room and expose what I had hoped to be a nice hardwood floor.  It’s a hardwood floor, not so nice though, and is going to require a lot of work.  I wonder how long that’s gonna take me!  Meanwhile, I’ve bought a bunch of green and blue accessories.  If I ever finish this room it’ll either be great, or I’ll hate it and start all over.  This has happened in just about every room in my place.  I really want to put up a tile back splash in my kitchen now.  I guess I should finish the dining room floor project first, huh?  All this really means is that my place is an enormous, never-ending, work in progress.   Just like me!