A Season of Distractions
Today is warm and rainy, and suddenly all the trees are bright green. The wisteria is beginning to drip blossoms, and along the roads, bushes are flowering in mostly purple, intermixed with pink and white—I’m finding the color of North Carolina’s Spring is purple. The trees that have not popped leaves yet have tiny red buds, making the hillsides resplendent in the colors of new growth.
With the energy of Spring, I’m hopeful that I once again find inspiration from the turning of the season. Normally, my most productive writing seasons are Spring and Autumn.
Unfortunately, that seems not to be the case.
In my defense, I am finding myself exceptionally distracted. You see, we are about to close on our very first house! I’m so excited. My evenings have been consumed by scrolling the ‘gram, finding inspiration in DIY’ers and honing in on my own desired aesthetic. My thoughts are filled with paint colors, molding ideas, wallpaper patterns, and plans for thrifting natural wood end tables and ornate mirrors. Now that we know the house is (almost) certain (which makes me feel a bit superstitious in writing it here), my distraction has gotten even worse. I just want to get in and get to work making it our own cozy perfect space!
So of course, layered over my distraction is guilt that I have not been working on Book 2. Par for the course, I keep setting goals and then just passing them by. The biggest problem is I am not being consistent. When I get into the habit of writing every day, I build up a nice momentum that helps keep me in a creative headspace. But between a trip to Spain to see family, financial planning, hunting for and then finding the house, and then going through the steps of actually buying the house, I keep allowing my momentum to be disrupted. How is one possibly to stay disciplined through all this! And I won’t even get into the distraction of my day job.
I’m once again remembering why LISHKA took me over 20 years to publish.
Today, yet again, I told myself I would spend most of the day working on the book. I keep saying this to my husband: “And tomorrow, I’m going to work on my book!” “This weekend, I need to work on my book.” Over and over, as if saying this will manifest the reality.
So far I’ve done laundry, dishes, read a little, went to breakfast with Chris (where I also dropped off a LISHKA at a free little library), drove to look at our new house (again, we cannot help it), and then packed a little for tomorrow’s work trip. And now I’m finally at the computer, where I fussed with my website before getting discouraged by it, opened up my draft, stared at it, then decided to write this blog post.
So now that I’ve put some angst down on ‘paper’, I suppose I better go work on the book.
But before I do, including some house inspiration ideas below!
HOUSE INSPIRATION SO FAR
Image 1 - I love this overall look and feel. Our windows are not nearly so high, but this color combination of the green, cream, and natural wood is just lovely and soothing.
Image 2 - Swooning over this wallpaper. Our (soon-to-be) house has a small downstairs bathroom that I want to turn into a moody dark bathroom. I’m thinking this wall paper paired with a dark paint color would be perfection, and I’m already scheming on a gold or bronze edged oval mirror to match.
Image 3 - I also love this paint color, as well as the molding on the walls, for our living room. I’m determined to DIY molding in the house (I have also just recently learned the term wainscoting!). I think the narrow, vertical molding is the way to go, to help the average height ceilings feel taller.
Happy Sunday!
