happy home designer

I don't know how to live in a happy home.

I don't know how to live in a home with a well-stocked fridge full of interesting condiments and a sunny kitchen and a cat and a dog and a living room that isn't full of cardboard boxes and electronics equipment.

I don't know how to live in a bedroom whose every square foot isn't packed with computers and wallpaper and garbage disposals.

I grew up in so much space - so much useless, empty, unhappy space.

And now, my bedroom, which is built out of wood-paneled walls that drive diagonally up to a tiled ceiling, is massive, and full of so much curiously, uselessly, unhappily empty space. I can buy a dozen dozen little toys to cram into the flat-pack bookshelf, and I have, and they make me smile all the time.

But then there are the plushie nets that I hung with unanchored hooks screwed straight into studs, and the little creatures and balls of yarn live in them both, all jumbled together, but they don't come out. They don't play.

I don't play. I have a free life and a free world in which to live it, and I don't play. Not my video games. Not my instruments. Certainly not my kitchen appliances.

And this, surely, is a petty complaint; is just as unfruitful as frittering about in my bed that somehow affords very little comfort for all what it's supposed to provide. When I'm busy, I'm very, very busy, and I get it all done forthwith.

But I also wake up at half past six naturally, and think of all the little tasks there are to do, and I do do things, surely.

I just wish that I could do them in less space - in a space more fully used for all its opportunity, more intricately decorated than anything yet entrant to my imagination.

Under low lights and fuzzy blankets. Happy.