Our homes are part of our self-definition. If you are in a decorating rut I am sure this is not good news. I can almost hear the snarky comments you are making about yourself and how that explains a lot about your current situation.
I am a super impatient person. I always say in interview speak “I am results oriented”. I need everything done yesterday and if it isn’t I feel practically hopeless. There is an African fable that stays with me about a tribesman who had never seen modern Western life and the entirety of his life was in the now. He was trapped in a large cave where he could only see the sky. The man could not understand the temporariness of his situation and thought his life would always be like this so he promptly died. He fully lived in the present and had no concept of waiting for tomorrow.
Normally, I’m all for living in the now, but if you don’t have the money for decorating fixes, you, like the tribesman in the story, feel like you will be trapped forever, thus, enveloped in the cave of the decorating rut.
Now this sounds pretty trivial as I write it. Decorating rut? It’s that trending #firstworldproblems thing. I really hate mentioning to people that I actually write about decorating. It sounds pointless, silly, superfluous, Desperate-Housewives-Beverly Hills-like. But that’s not what this is.
My mission statement says:
I Style Houses. And, no that is not going to save the world but I believe that happiness starts at Home. Good style is beauty at its best if it is authentic to the individual. Own your skin. Love your house. Create joy in your home (and pass it on).
And what that means is that if you aren’t happy, then you frown, complain, take it out on your kids, your family, your friends. You drive places in your car impatiently, cutting off others, honking, and yelling. You scowl at work. You scowl at the store. You say things you don’t mean. And all of that is contagious. It is so very contagious. So now everyone around you is touching your negativity, and they are passing it on, and so on. Think about bosses at work. Are they jerks? Are the people under them jerks? Is everyone afraid, stressed, snippy, and cut-throat? Unhappiness breeds negativity which breeds all the offshoots: dishonesty, jealousy, contempt, etc…
OMG I can’t take it. Stop the madness! Seriously. I can’t change the world but I can change myself. I can’t stop sickness, death, unfairness, injustice and intolerance but I can build a better toolbox to handle the inevitably of what it means to be alive. So my first tool is understanding the importance of how our environment can make it easier to experience happiness. We can promote ways–tools–that give us an advantage.
And that’s where my blog comes in. It’s about tools to make you happier. And if you are happier then everyone around you is happier…and that my gentle reader is NOT trivial–it’s important.
So your motivation to get out of your decorating rut is world happiness. And if that doesn’t motivate you I give up.
Kicking the Decorating Rut Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
