Digging Deep.

I’ve been undergoing a bit of a transformation lately.  And what I’ve learned is this: change is messy.  In that line between the before and after photo, therein lives chaos.

So, like seemingly everyone else around me, I’ve become mildly obsessed with (or possessed by) Marie Kondo and her book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up.

I admit it.  I’ll see those picture-perfect homes online, with their styled bookshelves and immaculately made beds, and I’ll want to move in.  I have a vision for the kind of life I want to live and, for awhile there, I’d sit at my desk and not see anything remotely like it.

I used to think open shelving would be perfect in my studio.  I’d create all these lovely little tableaus and everything would be carefully considered and artfully styled just so.  But it didn’t turn out that way.  My beautiful open shelves were quickly overwhelmed with sloppy stacks of books and unread magazines and ugly plastic bins overflowing with paper, bursting and poking out all over the edges.  While I create things to be seen and experienced, the birthplace of those things isn’t always pretty.  Nor does it have to be.  My sweet home-based studio is supposed to be a safe space for creative chaos and I’ve since learned that sometimes the process is better left behind closed doors (read: buy cabinets!).

After enduring weeks of total mayhem (trudging through the tediousness of unearthing and discarding all the joyless things I’d hoarded, while simultaneously berating myself for letting this happen and hating Marie Kondo for inciting this awesome-slash-terrible disaster of a process), I’ve since discovered peace.  Now I love my office space.  I wake up earlier, I’m back to writing daily and I’d even been able to make a few collages again — something I hadn’t done or even felt inspired to do in a really long time.

On that note, I’ll leave with you some photos I’d recently rediscovered from a writing retreat I went to a few years back.  I’ve always wanted to recreate the quiet magic I’d felt on that trip here at home and now I think I just might be able to.

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