My Internal Predicament
I want to live at the beach. I think I’ve wanted to ever since I went to the beach for the first time…which I don’t even remember when that was so basically, I’ve wanted to live at the beach for most of my existence.
Which brings me to where I am now…not living at the beach. And I just bought a house in a land-locked state….so I don’t think that dream will happen this year. What I decided CAN happen though, is bringing the beach to me.
I decided to do a board and batten wall in my living room about 2 weeks before Thanksgiving. And I was hosting Thanksgiving. (Credit to my parents for coming in clutch on helping me get it done.) We got the trim up on the wall with the TV mounted (I felt like I’d officially arrived into adulthood by having my TV mounted), but I hadn’t decided on a paint color yet, so the wall looked a bit rough.
Originally, I wanted to go with a beige color to warm up the room since the kitchen is gray and the walls are all white. However, the paint swatches I’d grabbed didn’t look the same in my living room as they did in the rooms of influencers online. Somehow, I ended up in the blue realm and came home with about 137 shades of paint samples from Lowe’s.
Café Blue. That one looked the best. The warmest of them all so I could still keep the cozy vibe while bringing in blue’s calming effect.
I also had the novel idea to buy an old fireplace mantel, paint it white, and put it in the middle of the wall. This all sounded good in my head. But when I finished painting, I was a bit doubtful. The white felt too stark against the blue. I couldn’t quite picture a different color that would look good though. And I’d just spent 10 hours painting. At that point, I wasn’t changing it. Stark white would have to do for Thanksgiving.
Throughout the next few weeks, I debated if I even liked the blue color. Was it too much color when I was trying to go for the modern organic vibe? I found an Instagram page one morning where their home was mostly tans and whites and it felt so homey and cozy that I got out of bed deciding to undo the blue.
And then, I started liking it again. Note: most of this debate occurred when there was a large green Christmas tree next to the blue wall. Not exactly my ideal color scheme. Well, I finally took down my Christmas tree. As I’ve walked past this wall 27 times each day and seen it next to my beige chair with a pillow that says “Beach House” on it, the blue is growing on me. It’s giving off coastal vibes now (maybe because of the pillow, I don’t know), and I’ve decided to accept it. To embrace it, really. So now, I’m looking for the perfect ocean picture to put between my two windows. Because maybe this will satisfy my dream for a beach house, at least until I actually buy the beach house. Because why not meet myself where I’m at and make it the happiest place I can with the means I currently have?
I didn’t really have a point in writing this other than to simply share. But if we want to find a lesson in it, maybe it’s this: sometimes people make decisions and stick with those decisions. That’s all we see. And what we don’t see could very well be an internal constant debate on whether that decision still feels correct. Just because someone looks sure on the outside doesn’t mean they truly feel that way all the time. So let’s give grace to each other, even when their decisions unintentionally hurt us. They did what they thought was best for them at the time. That’s all we can hope for each other to do.
Here’s what it looks like now!