because susan asked!

How did the week go?
Well, I made it the whole week and as to be expected, the last days were much harder than the first. I was climbing the walls by the end of the week, taking slow, roundabout trips to the bathroom, wandering the cube aisles, randomly standing up to peer over cube wall after cube wall to look out a window (that is about 20 feet away) at the gray, gray Portland sky.

I think the bottom line is that those random trips to creative websites make me better at my job. A little bit, in fact, like looking out the window might. Only, since I don’t have any windows I look in to other lives. And those short, brief recharges give my subconscious time to work out ideas, identify problems, get some space. And then I come back to work just a little bit refreshed. And I see things I didn’t see before.

On the flip side, I think I was a little more satisfied, overall, with my life when I wasn’t looking, every day, at these websites. I wasn’t reading tutorials for yet more sewing projects, art projects, baking projects. So my heap of “wish to do” didn’t get any bigger. (Which is good, because it’s already big. Really big.)

I also think that I got a little distance from the-admiration-that-is-so-much-like-envy. (I bet the Dutch have a word for this. Or maybe the Chinese.) I read these blogs and I admire these people (And I don't even know them and that's just plain weird). But I still admire the beauty, the creativity that seems to be in their every day. And then I look at my own life and see yesterday’s dirty dishes on the counter and a stack of mail that needs to be filed and I judge. I’m stepping out of myself and looking in and thinking….really?

But then again. These people are editing their lives. It’s a whole ‘nother monster of blogs who actually write about the ugly stuff. Like the woman who blogged about the three nights it took to let her baby “cry it out”. Her blog helped me through my own “cry it out” adventure. (Well, that and a bottle of wine.) Or, more recently, this guy who wrote about how much it sucks when your kid has a cough. That helped me through Addie’s nasty-ugly virus last week. (Okay. It’s not a blog, really, but you get the idea.)

So I can recognize that I’m buying into a picture of life. The Pottery Barn version of the stay-at-home-artist-mom. But hey, when I’m not busy feeling the difference between me and them, I’m feeling the sameness. And I’m believing that there might be a day that I escape the cube completely. Because you gotta have a picture of the life you want, before you can draw the map to get there.

(Thanks for askin' Susan!)