“We adore chaos because we love to produce order.”
-M C Escher
Addicted to chaos….?
I wrote this post surrounded by the sounds of cutting and drilling inbetween working and homeschooling my daughter while navigating noise, mess, and people tromping around my house (in the name of home improvement).
And I wondered if this chaos was really worth it.
I moved into this home 3 years ago, a week before my daughter started at her new school and my husband started a new job. We didn’t do anything to the house. We even bought some of the previous owner’s furniture to make the move as easy as possible. We threw clothes in the closets and went heads down into work and life and until COVID hit, we haven’t looked up. With 4 vacations canceled, work travel on hold, and my husband at home consistently for the first time in over 10 years, things that I thought were ok with my surroundings began reeeeeaaallllly irking me.
One of the things I need to be happy and productive is an inspiring space.
It took me years to realize this wasn’t selfish, it was essential to my ability to serve my clients and be the mom, wife, revival guide and marketing badass I need to be every day. With no break from this home, I began to see that the smudged, inconsistent paint throughout the home was really bugging me. Our bedrooms have never had enough space for books and clothes and our patio needed to be entirely replaced. And overall, I was not feeling the “yay, ahhh” I have felt from other homes.
Everything I do stems from my home. I felt a lot of guilt for not being grateful for my current environment and the sounds of “who do you think you are?” from my childhood filled my brain. And then it hit me. I am a 40-something entrepreneur who needs to stop settling for “ok” personally when she advocates for her clients to always have “YAYYYY!!!!” everyday.
So I hired a designer. Together, we prioritized my “need to have’s” versus “nice to have’s”. And like any optimization project, the more I got into things, the more things I found that needed attention. I wanted to be able to turn my brain off and not see things that I was seeing, but I couldn’t.
I felt like a chaos addict. Why on earth would I want to add more ideas to the mess versus just getting one project done?
As the carpenters left today, I walked upstairs to see the work in progress and although nothing is in place, I saw a sense of progress and could envision the new, optimized environment.
Then I took a breath and realized that I wasn’t addicted to chaos. I was finally in a place where I was ready and able to invest (time and money) in order.
As we grow and develop personally and professionally, we have to embrace that there is unavoidable messiness before we get to a higher order.
Are there things you are putting off because it feels messy, uncomfortable, selfish or chaotic?
Change isn’t always easy, tidy…. or quiet.