Torn

We’re renovating the house. While we live in it. What were we thinking?

We are doing things in stages and moving in and out of spaces as they are worked on.

I’ve moved my office from downstairs—we have an upside-down house with our rumpus room downstairs while everything else is upstairs—into a tiny little room upstairs. We call this little room the Book Room. It is filled with novels and literary fiction and stuff. We squeezed a single bed in, too, and pretended like it could be a spare room. It was always a tight fit for someone living in it longer than one night.

Originally, the room was advertised as a study. It sits next door to the master bedroom which is, in my opinion, just a bit too big. If only the previous renovators had thought to move the adjoining wall over one metre. But they did not. And we will not.

The cost of moving that wall and the built-in robes is just too prohibitive. Anyway, the kids are in various stages of moving out and soon it will be just the two of us here.

The first stage of our renovations involves clearing several rooms so that the flooring can be taken up, new cabinetry installed, and new flooring put down. Then we move everything back into those spaces and out of the next lot of space for a rinse and repeat.

Ten or so years ago, we moved in here and put some boxes of random stuff into the big cupboard in the Book Room. I finally finished unpacking and sorting those boxes. Today.

And then I moved my study from downstairs into the newly cleaned and cleared Book Room. For now, the bed has gone into an ex-kid room.

There are some things missing from my new study space—my PhD folders and notes, and all of my literary non-fiction. Sitting here, I am surrounded by novels from the likes of Maeve Binchy and Liane Moriarty. Although tempted to down tools and lose myself in a novel, I want to see what this space feels like.

Can it help me overcome this unspoken creative inertia?

It isn’t that I am suffering from writer’s block, I’m still writing. I’m just not hitting publish. There are a number of blog posts that I have written, put photos will, and then not published. I tell myself I wasn’t feeling it and walk away. And I wasn’t.

I haven’t been for a while.

I miss my studies. I knew I would. I love to learn. But I thought that funk would pass by now. It is over a year since I was fully involved in reading and researching.

Other things have changed, too. I’ve set new boundaries in my life and am aware of the way I am viewed by the people who are affected by those boundaries. I self-edit my writing so as not to upset them further. Even now, I am wondering if I will go back and delete this paragraph.

What is happening with this self-editing is that I am editing out the things that need to be said. I am editing out the interesting, the intense, the big ideas that cut to the bone. I am editing out myself.

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It is such a privilege to be able to renovate our house.

We have made the decision to not move again unless we have to. We like our neighbours. We like our town. We like where we live in that town.

Until we renovated, there was nothing to upset the patterns we had established. Now that those patterns are being challenged by the necessity to physically sort and move stuff, I have space to reflect on whether those patterns were working for me.

It’s cold downstairs. Even in the summer. The rumpus room faces east, as does the Book Room, but is exposed to full morning sun and then nothing. Unlike the Book Room which is sheltered by our lovely tree in the morning and captures just a little bit of afternoon light filtering through the house.

The rumpus room is also a multipurpose space. If I am working, no one can walk on the treadmill or play the piano. And if someone is walking or playing, I can’t work. Like I need any more excuses not to sit at my computer!

Hubby and I have agreed. Let’s see what this new space is like while downstairs undergoes its transformation. The storage and shelving will work whether the space is my study or not. A spare bed, sofa bed, or sleeping area can be housed there. My paintings and art supplies will still go there, we will still keep books there, and the larder will still work as a larder.

In the meantime, I look out into tree branches. Brown thornbills flit about, making a fuss over their teenage fledglings who will soon be usurped by eggs and broody parents. For now, it is enough for these teenagers to be making a fuss while their parent encouragement them toward independence.

The wind moves the leaves, revealing patches of colour—our neighbour’s roofs and cars and yards. If I squint, I imagine I am simply looking at Monet waterlilies type of suburbia painting.

Looking through the bottom of the window, down at the garden, I see our not-quite-right kitty snoozing in the sun on the planter box. Our other neurotic lovely is making noise at the door but it is far away enough to not draw an emotive response.

In contrast, I hear the murmur of my family doing their thing down the hall and feel a sense of affection and connection.

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Things can be different from how they are imagined.

The unexpected can happen and it can be something simple, unremarkable, ordinary even.

Seasons pass. My season for study has passed. I loved it so much but it is over now. The next season isn’t yet clear but I am beginning to understand what it isn’t.

It isn’t about continuing unhelpful patterns or hoping that something will change or maintaining anger over things long past. It doesn’t matter if you are young, aging, or aged, you must open yourself to new things, to being a new version of yourself. You might be surprised to find that change can be quite a gift.

All because I sit here, in this new and unexpected space.