Write. Read. Repeat.

The fact that this is the first post since the D-Day post, should say something. We are on month four since he departed the country and the first mental break has hit. It is always the smallest things that breaks the damn holding back the big.

Home projects are one of the ways I have always kept my mind busy when life is becoming too much. I recently got a bed frame like the real adult that I have become, but as any pet parent knows, your cats find a way to ruin the things you love. Mave has negative scratching behaviors and I want to protect my new investment.

Once my lush black velvet bed frame arrived and I got it assembled, the fear of my cat scratching it to bits, like he has our mattress, set in full force.

Growing up with Bob The Builder and Martha Stewart as your parents, you learn how to make something from scratch or an existing item into your own. So, smart-ass me decided to build a U-shaped structure made of stained, pine boards to slide around the frame, not only to block off the corners from my demon cat, but to also keep the bastards from getting under the bed.

Any woodworker will tell you “measure twice and cut once”, but what happens when you cannot do the math. Luckily in my mistake, I cut the boards too long (by 5.5”) instead of irreversibly too short, but had only realized my mistake when I thought I had finally made it to the final install portion of this project. Which is the worst time to discover a mistake in my opinion.

So, I sat there on my bedroom floor in an absolute puddle of emotion, trying to acknowledging that this was a fixable mistake, but it was the “straw that broke the camel’s back” so to speak. All of the feeling of not being good enough, not doing things right, making mistakes, and feeling like I cannot make it on my own slammed into me like a freight train.

Over the last few years to recent months, I have been coming to terms with why I procrastinate and/or become discouraged so often in my life and this little, fixable mistake felt like a good starting point. Instead of throwing in the towel and setting aside this project for another month, I took the boards back to my garage, whipped out the saw and got to work. Bet your ass, I measured three more times before I cut again, but pushing myself to keep going was euphoric.

Now, I have shit luck in life to the point of “when it rains it pours” being a beyond accurate life caption. I recut the boards, sanded the new edges, reattached the brackets, then I accidentally kicked one of the corner boards and broke it in half…. But did I fall apart again and give up? No. I took in the moment and moved on to the fixing.

The broken board is currently clamped together as the glue sets and I have to wait 24 hours before I can finish, and the feeling of loosing the motivation I had at the set out this morning is hard, but I am pleased about the work I did accomplish.

Basically, what I am saying, and though it is a cliche, when life gets shitty, keep going. I felt proud that I could look at this situation and still feel good about myself afterward. That no matter how many things went wrong, I did not give up and felt like the whole world has ended.

Working on some shadow work/self-finding things right now, so post on that to come.

Thank you for reading.