Let me preface this whole thing by saying that titling one’s self a “Fixer Upper” is in no way a personal slam. Look at it like this - we could all use a little work, it is just a matter of how we address our, well, let’s just call them ‘less than desirable’ attributes.
In life we might be quick to see the fantastic foundation or great architectural lines of a Pre-War Colonial but if its shabby shutters were on our person instead of our prime fixer upper property, we would write it off so fast we wouldn’t even have a chance to explore inside.
There is something exciting, rejuvenating, validating even, about finding a project that requires some serious elbow grease and digging in full heartedly.
I suppose I could have gotten into another home improvement project but I have decked out my 900 square foot loft about as much as it can get. (However, I will get it on Apartment Therapy if it kills me.)
No, this time my focus needs to be about doing a little personal renovation, starting with the inside out.
You see, I used to have this blog and well, people read it. Not a ton of people but enough to make me nervous about admitting authorship in my mid-size metro. One thing led to another, details of which I will save for another time, and I decided to kill the thing. Imagine my surprise when that pissed people off. (You would have thought with all that heat that one of those darn publishers would have bought my book on the topic, but again, we’ll get to that later.)
It has been a few months since I have written anything at all and I was feeling a bit lost and a bit lost for material.
“Writer’s Block,” I said.
“Bullshit,” my shrink, Jamie said. Jamie provides me with copious amounts of fodder, not hat I would ever tell her that. I was beyond relieved when she then told me that she had never read a blog in her life and decide I would promptly begin documenting our sessions in detail. “It is time you kick your own ass.”
Um…ouch?
Jamie told me to write about having trouble writing, to write about the issues in my life and to write about what it feels like to get smacked with rejection on a near daily basis. I told her I thought that idea was rather self-indulgent. She said so what.
My reasons for killing the last blog had had a lot to do with it reaching a point where my quippy introspection were starting to feel trite and because a few stupid comments from people I respected had stirred up my deepest insecurities.
I told Jamie this and she told me to write about it.
She wanted me to write about my issues. Well doesn’t that just feel like a Lifetime made-for-tv movie.
“So think about it beyond you. Think about how people deal with issues, with adversity on a greater whole.”
And that started to make sense.
So we come to my great fixer-upper metaphor. Granted it is not the most original idea I have ever come up with but I do think it says a lot about dealing with our shit. What if dealing with all of the stuff that we are less than thrilled with about ourselves was less of a chore and more of a learning experience. Clearly, there is a whole industry based on self- help, on making people feel like they MUST become someone different in order to be happy. To which, I cry Bullshit.
I am not talking about becoming someone different. I like me. I like my foundation. I am just talking about painting a few shutters and remodeling a back porch.
(And if you can’t figure out what back porch I am referring to you might want to stop reading now because that is as clever as my metaphors are going to get.)
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