March 2017 - My Soul is Scottish

When a house becomes a home

The reconstruction is almost complete; only a few small bits to finish up in the kitchen. My broken woodpile is a home again! It feels like the sun has come up for the first time in months and the stress has moved out.

Friday morning – floors almost done and still a construction site

The view of the chaos from upstairs on the landing

Under my kitchen sink on the day they ripped out the walls and cabinets

Friday afternoon after the construction crew put my furniture back in place and I finally got to clean the floors and unpack again

Cabinets back in and wall fixed. They’re finishing the kitchen tomorrow and installing the toe-kicks and finishing up the floor

Everything has an energy, even inanimate things. Before I bought this house, it was renovated, supposedly. In hindsight, it wasn’t completely renovated; it was the equivalent of putting a band-aid on a severed limb. The neglect was painted over and made to look better, but the damage within the bones was ignored. This house was NOT happy.

In all fairness, if I’d been neglected for years and not taken care of, I’d be pretty pissed too. There are certain things that need to be serviced and replaced periodically in houses; it’s all part of the ‘joy’ of home-ownership; you get to take care of these things. Or in the case of the previous sets of owners, NOT take care of them. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that it will eventually give out and break. Which is what it did. Instead of having a small wound, this place had a full-on breakdown. I’ve decided to view it as the inanimate-equivalent of a full blown tantrum.

Instead of viewing the chaos as a home in need of care and repair, I hated it and funneled my anger into it for all the disappointment it had caused me and for all the ways it had let me down. Obviously, I thought I’d signed on for something different; a renovated home, not a money pit. About a week ago I decided that this house and I need to get onto the same page. So I did the only crazy thing I know; I had a frank discussion with this house, in the same way you’d have a chat to a friend. Out loud. Yes, I know, they probably make pills for this.

After getting the apologies out of the way, for all the anger I’d brought to the party since the snafu in January, I acknowledged all the ways this house has been neglected. Looking at some of the scars left, this house was in pretty bad disrepair before it was ‘renovated.’ Then the renovation just glossed it up and dumped it on the first person to fall for it. Whether the previous sets of owners just didn’t give a shit, or whether they financially couldn’t handle it, this house was left to break and there was never a level of love and care put into it to make it whole again. It’s a bit like breaking up with your partner because they got sick; they just walked away and left it.

This place was built to be someone’s home and there are no visible signs that it ever was. The people I bought it from, never lived here. They owned it for 2 years and it stood empty while they renovated it. It’s been a long time since any kind of love lived within these walls, then I moved in and my anger moved in 5 weeks later.

It’s time this place was a home. My home. There are still things to be fixed, and I will fix them one at a time. I’ve promised to take care of the things that need fixing, in exchange for my house showing me what those things are. If there’s a leak, show me where it is gently; don’t collapse the ceiling around me to get my attention. I can only fix them slowly, so if this house collapses around my ears, I can’t fix that. But I can turn this home into the Belle of the Block, one project at a time.

Acknowledging the neglect has really shifted the energy. This isn’t a fight anymore. We are 2 things in need of care and pampering; my house and me.

Thanks to the amazing crew at Chicago Water and Fire, my house feels like a home. I have floors again. The broken kitchen is functional and better than it was before. There’s extra storage, the paint is fresh, the walls are no longer gaping holes oozing insulation, the floors are gorgeous and smooth underfoot. Everything is back in its place and the energy has changed completely. It’s gone from feeling angry and negative to a sanctuary; even my body feels lighter.

By recognizing how deep the neglect has run into the core of this house, something has shifted mentally. Restoration is going to take time and it needs to go right down to the bones. You can only fix something if you’re willing to admit that it’s broken and I am broken. So after 20 years of having it on every single list of things I want to do with my life, I took myself to yoga. By myself. Restorative yoga isn’t what was on the list, but it’s what is necessary right now. I cannot restore this house down to the bones, if I’m too chicken-shit to do the same thing for myself.

To Henley, for taking me a restorative class in Canada 3 years ago; to Kara for constantly nudging me to try it; to Tia for researching the studio to make sure it would be the right place for me and for encouraging me to go, THANK YOU! Love you ladies to the moon and back.

Black and white

Every artist has a muse and mine apparently lives in my bathtub. Whenever I have some serious thinking to do, I have a soak in the tub. I usually end up with an answer to a question I didn’t ask, but probably should have.

Today’s Bathtub Epiphany was about positives and negatives; success and failure; black and white.

Ask almost anyone and they’ll agree that it’s easier to believe something bad about yourself than something good. Tell a person they’re a failure once and they’ll probably never forget it because that’s gospel. Tell a person they’re a success and you’ll likely have to keep telling them because ‘you’re just saying that.’

Tell a woman she’s beautiful and she’ll likely deflect the compliment by pointing out the flaws you’ve missed; tell her she’s fat….. Dear God. The scar will never fade.

Why is it that we’re so much more receptive to the things that make us unhappy?

I have a black and white dress with skulls and roses on and it happened to be hanging up in the bathroom while I was having my soak. It got me thinking about the duality of things. Happiness and sadness. Life and death. Black and white.

It’s probably safe to say most of us live our lives in shades of grey; not too happy; not too sad. Safe somewhere in the middle. When someone reminds us of our failures, we catapult onto the dark side of the spectrum. Dark moods, anger, depression. We hang onto our shame and failure like hard-won badges of honour and no-one can pry them from us.

When someone throws us a bone and praises our creativity or success, we suspiciously stare that bone down for ages. Most of us won’t even make the attempt to go and pick it up because it must be a trap. For some bizarre reason it’s easier to hang about on the dark side than it is to step over to the light. Why is that?

If you look at the physical properties of colour, black and white are not generally considered colours at all. Black absorbs light and reflects no colour back. White absorbs nothing and reflects all the colours back. Interesting…..

Maybe that’s a bit like life. When we absorb all the negativity and crap around us, our moods shift to the dark side of the spectrum. No light is reflected back. When we let all that negativity bounce off us, we’re reflecting all of our colours back into the world.

For the longest time I’ve wanted to write. I’ve found my voice but I’ve never settled on a topic to write about, so I’ve considered myself more of a wannabe writer. I mean, you’re not a writer unless you’re published, right? Wrong.

Dead wrong. If you’re putting words on paper, you’re writing. If what’s in your head is being born onto paper and left out there, you’re writing. If you put paint on a canvas, you’re painting. That makes you a painter. Maybe not a famous one, but you’re still a painter. To be who you want to be, you need to BE who you want to be. Not think it. Not dream it. BE IT.

We absorb the colours of expectation and then tie our dreams to those anchors. Then we cry in agony when those dreams sink away from us and never fully accept that we had a hand in drowning them. Every little thing I thought I had to be has dragged me further into the darkness and further away from the goal. It wouldn’t surprise me if half the population has the same problem. We’re so focused on every single expectation others have of us that we have no room to reflect on what makes us uniquely capable. We’re here, now. THAT makes us uniquely capable.

Our clocks will run out soon enough and at that point, the space we occupy in the world will shrink. What will remain is what we created. So create. Have no expectation other than the pleasure you will get from it. Your creation doesn’t have to be a masterpiece. It doesn’t have to fund your life. It doesn’t have to do anything other than make you happy and exist.

If you want to paint, then do it and hang it up. There you go, your art is adorning the walls! If you want to write and be published, then write and publish it yourself on Kindle, or wherever. We can do that. Take the photos, create a Facebook page for them or whatever takes your fancy. Cook the gourmet meal on a week night & be the chef you’ve always wanted to be. Why wait until you can cook for strangers when you can start now, cooking for people you love. Stockpile all your secret recipes for that cookbook you’ve wanted to do for the last however many years. Decorate your sanctuary, even if it’s just a room and hone your internal decorating skills. Create it and leave it out there but don’t weigh it down with expectation.

Gone are the days when the Gates to Creativity were manned by publishers, producers, art directors and the like. The Gate is still there, but what we’ve failed to realise is, there’s no wall on either side of it anymore. Walking through the Gate isn’t necessary when you can walk right past it to the same destination. The destination that you build for yourself without needing their damn permission to succeed.

Weird things Americans do

A while back I wrote about the weird quirks South Africans and English people have. Next stop: America!

Each place has its own unique quirks; things that make perfect sense to everyone who lives there, but to strangers, not so much. A standard American greeting is ‘Hi, how are ya?’ This is absolutely NOT a question. It is a statement. If you answer that with anything resembling how you are, you get the oddest looks. 6 years I’ve been answering that damn question…

The word ‘fetch’. I told a colleague I was going to fetch a friend at the airport and got ‘Say what now?’ You know, she’s at the airport, then I will fetch her, then she’ll be with me. ‘Oh…. you mean grab?’ No. This isn’t a staged kidnapping. 100% of the time, the word ‘fetch’ in relation to anything other than a dog, causes confusion. You can grab or pick up, never fetch.

The word herb. It’s pronounced ‘erb here, and it breaks my brain every time. What happens when the guy’s name is Herb? I had a colleague who interviewed with a guy named Herb and she said she had to actually concentrate not to call him ‘erb. Oh boy….. She got the job by the way.

Trolleys (shopping carts) have cup holders. An actual place to put your beverage. Personally, I have no clue why anyone would attempt to steer a renegade trolley one-handed while attempting to consume a hot coffee. It’s like a legal version of drinking and driving. It takes an epic level of skill, which I haven’t yet mastered. Score 1 to Murica!

Frequently you’ll see people going to school, walking around the station or out shopping in their fleecy pajama pants. Yep, fleecy snowman pants, on teenage boys, in public. WHY? Last winter I was stopped behind a school bus waiting for the little darlings to get off and virtually every person on that bus was in PJ pants. No, it wasn’t ‘wear your jammies to school’ day, it is a legit thing. Not just kids, grownups too. And believe me, it’s not just in Walmart either. I checked with my nephew & he doesn’t understand either. He’s 15 going on 50, so he’s equally disturbed by this oddity. Is this a fashion trend? Sweat pants sure, but pajamas?? Really? God, I sound like my grandmother.

Rigorously defending their Constitutional right to freedom of speech on one hand, and also being utterly offended at what someone said to the point of considering legal action to remedy their hurt feelings. Best not go to South Africa then, because Saffas are notorious for having no brain-mouth filters at all. It’s likely that my cause of death will be being sarcastic at the wrong time. Oh well, ho hum. I am personally too lazy to be offended by someone else’s opinion of anything. For me to be offended, I’d have to care, and the chances are I probably don’t.

In South Africa, people often refer to themselves as stupid when they do something dumb. Do NOT attempt to call yourself stupid here, it really upsets the locals. There’s something about that word that deeply offends them, even if you’re using it in reference to yourself. Saffas also say ‘don’t be ugly’, meaning something along the lines of ‘don’t be mean/rude/whatever’. Say that in Murica and sweet baby Jesus and all the saints, people lose their shit. I can see why, but always figured the context would speak for itself. Assumption really is the mother of all fuck ups.

So to all Americans, please take this as a blanket apology in advance for all the unintentional offence I will undoubtedly cause during my lifetime and I really will try to use the correct verbiage based on geographical location. The chances of success are slim to none but I’ll give it a go.

Sometimes you just need a bloody scotch.

At some point we’ve all scratched our heads in confusion wondering what the point of it all is. The point of life. The point of struggle. The point of anything at all.

The Enlightened among us figure it out early; the rest of us careen through life like out-of-control bumper cars. The assumption is that we’ll eventually figure it out, right? That’s the eternal unanswered question, isn’t it? It’s a safe assumption that we’re all winging it.

After another few setbacks this week, it feels like life is hanging off a very short rope and secretly I hope the rope snaps, bringing an abrupt end to the chaos. As I’ve mentioned before, tying myself to one place was never been on the list of things to do, and for 40 years it’s been mission accomplished. Since abruptly changing direction and doing the one thing I said I’d never do, life has been total mayhem. It’s been chaos, wrapped in mayhem, sprinkled with carnage.

The socially accepted standardized map for living is find a partner, get hitched, buy a house with a picket fence (or a McMansion, whatever floats your boat) and sprout out a few kids. Maybe throw in a dog/cat/goldfish/parrot. That’s the map I’ve measured myself against since I’ve been old enough to vote and have fallen short in every single category. I haven’t done a single thing on that map and have judged myself a failure as a woman because of it. I’ve never measured up to the ‘successful’ siblings in the family.

So I spontaneously went against every instinct and let me tell ya, life has kneed me in the bollocks constantly since I did. It made me realize something on the train home today. No-one knows you better than you do. If your life path deviates from the standardized map that society uses to judge your worth, THEN LET IT. You don’t need to justify your life choices and your version of happiness to anyone. Stop trying to live up to someone else’s picture of what being a well-adjusted adult should look like. If your gut instinct is screaming NO, then for the love of God, LISTEN!

I had more than one moment of wanting to walk away from the purchase of this house; instead I went through with it, putting the feeling down to the stress involved in buying a house. Life has always been about having freedom; the freedom to travel; the freedom to move at a moment’s notice; the freedom of having no-one to answer to by myself. I spent too long feeling caged by life and from the minute I tasted freedom, I’ve never let it go. Until now.

The cage door has closed and regret is the lock on the door. There’s no inspiration to write; no urge to create; no joy in hobbies because every iota of energy is being sapped by stress. Fleeting moments of contentment in the garden are paid for with a pound of stress brought on by the responsibility of a mortgage.

It’s been a lot of years since I’ve wanted to run up the white flag on my life and just call it a day. Ignoring the one thing I know about myself and flying in the opposite direction will go down as my biggest regret. Every setback makes the dream of going home seem impossible. In a stupid attempt to have a place to call home, I have a house, while home is an ocean and 3,700 miles away.

Anyone have any useful tips on how to just close the door and walk off the grid? Just a backpack & a destination and let the world deal with what’s left. Just an occasional postcard, with an obscure postmark, letting them know I’m still alive.

Maybe that’s my road to Enlightenment. Maybe mental suffering is more closely linked to the physical things we tie ourselves to, rather than the physical things we can live without. More stuff = less freedom and in the end, the only thing that will leave this world with you is your soul, with all of its memories. The stuff won’t matter. It never did. Lesson learned and now the tedious process of divesting myself of the anchor I’ve tied to myself. There has to be a way to flip the switch from bad to good, because if I don’t, the spiral into chaos will not end. God…… this might take a while & a significant amount of scotch.

May the odds be ever in our favour.