Actually, that's not right. It really started with this chair. This squat, wooden, paint-chipped, sad-looking thing that came whether-we-liked-it-or-not with a craigslist desk purchase.
This sad little chair sat where a sad chair sits: In the shadows. But I saw its potential. Or at least in the haze of my early retirement/summer-time unemployment I saw a project.
Inspired by the loud print on my London bag, I was going to transform the chair with a similar, painted design. Sure. Why not? Once in my life I used to do creative things and isn't that what unemployment is about? A good old fashioned project? Or, is that retirement.
Well, off to Home Debot I went. Things to sand with, a range of paint brushes and teeny tiny colored paints were purchased. The paints were genius. Paint people have finally realized that we -- the people who think we can do projects on our own and so come to Home Depot with such anticipatory dreams or artistic mastery -- are idiots. We buy things, in this instance house paint, because they have yummy-sounding names ("Tangerine is exactly the color I should paint my living room") not because they are a practical design solution to a boring living room ("Yes. No, I thought it'd be more cheerful than electric-black-lit."). So now paint people make tester sizes so you don't waste your time and money on an electric-non-cheerful room because it sounded nice.
Supplies and inspiration in hand I set to work.
The bitch of it all was getting that damn chair down to a functional working point.
Oh the chair wasn't red. Nor, after a few hours stripping away the red with a few sheets of sand paper in the hot summer sun, was it yellow. Unfathomably, beneath the yellow were chunks of blue that finally gave way to some wood.
And so I painted. Two coats of a white base+primer. But that was nothing. After a solid day of sanding and painting in the front yard of our Cambridge apartment I brought the chair inside to get to the detail.
And this is where time passes. First I drew the design and then I painted. It worked well at first. I would spend weekend days or an afternoon here and there drawing and painting these little splotches of flowers. But then it would get a little old and the chair would be shadowed again.
And then summer ended, as did my unemployment and we moved. The chair came with, of course, as did my make-shift box tool kit of supplies. The chair was newly situated in our brighter apartment, already out of the shadows, and placed prominently in our bedroom. And oh did it's unfinished nature glare in that brightness. It stared me down when I was in the kitchen. It mocked me as I sat on the couch. It taunted me after I came home from work.
And then on Saturday in the middle of winter, I attacked that thing. With the same gusto that found me sweating and laboring through three layers of ancient paint that warm summer day months before, I finished that damn chair.
And now it looks so cute in our room:
I was proud of my incredibly delayed accomplishment and actually giddy that I had finished a project I started seasons ago.
I think it's a new side effect of my profession, but I have gotten into the habit of taking on projects and not following through. They can even get incredibly close, and yet they remain unfinished black holes.
Part of it is work. Getting home late and feeling burnt out -- my creativity and motivation abandon my head and heart and run to the safe confines of the pads of my pointer and thumb fingers that allow me to muster the energy to turn on the TV.
R and I have even instituted rules and obstacles that can force us into productivity.
1) We don't have cable (a financial decision, initially that we thought would inspire motivation)
2) Our couch isn't one that invites lounging.
3) As part of a New Year's resolution I (we) decided to dedicate two week day evenings to projects. We first called them workdays, but gave the whole concept a negative spin. So they were just loosely called no TV days.
And it worked, at first. Like all resolutions, this one's expiration date was bumped up a few months when laziness and winter doldrums kicked in.
During the actual workday I would get inspired by something I saw or thought of and want to blog about it or look into a story idea. Then the day would progress, finally end, venture the subway home, and I would walk up those four flights of stairs famished and tired and not want to do anything but nothing.
So, how does one finish projects? How do you stay inspired? As I fight my way through this competitive field I recognize that I need to step up my game, finish the projects i start and try to avoid the couch-suck. But, oh, it's hard.
Which is why the chair gives me hope. It inspired me to write a blog post, at any rate (which, let's be honest, has become a few-and-far-between kind of a thing).
I started it. I finished it. And I'm proud of it. Sure it took the better part of a year, but who's counting.
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