Sick and Tired

For the last few weeks, I have been feeling really meh, and for the last couple of days, I have also felt physically sick. It's amazing how much power the mind has over the body... I mean, I legit had some issues today (yesterday) with acid reflux, even though I take something for it daily, but I know part of it is all the stuff that is weighing on my mind.

First, this whole mess of living in a village for businesses is really stressful. I have too many people breathing down my neck about us being a retail store with regular hours, etc. I've been placing a lot of value on their comments, but no more. We're closed for the foreseeable future, and the money that was going to be spent down there, taking down walls and re-routing electricity and such, is going to be spent in our apartment instead. I can't continue to live with three floors of utter chaos, and it's been 5 years since we moved in... we spent a bit of time in the beginning sprucing the place up, but then spent the vast majority of time and money on the main floor. No more. I want our home to be comfortable, pretty, and exactly what we want it to be. I don't want to settle anymore.

We're picking tile, and other flooring, doing all new moldings, and painting doors and such to transform this 70s apartment into a proper modern farmhouse. Yay! We will finally be upgrading our used oven, whose numbers you can't even read anymore and whose heat is totally random, and we will upgrade our hand-me-down microwave that takes double the time to heat anything. I'm going to actually USE all the vintage linens I have been collecting (GASP!) to make curtains and other things to use throughout the house, and I want to create a gallery wall in our dining space, and repaint some furniture that has been in need for quite some time.

Meanwhile, we have found a great contractor who is reasonably priced and highly-skilled. He's going to do some work in our bathroom, arguably the worst room of the house at the moment, before we set him loose on the main floor demo. He has a great plan of attack for that space, so I'm excited to see what he does.

All of this has brought me such peace of mind. My anxiety about how everything was going to work out in terms of rebuilding the store space and reopening to appease our neighbors was making me sick. I just want to forget about all of that for now, focus on our home, and use my studio for what it is meant to be -- a studio. No set hours, no nothing. I can use some of the space for taking photos of my work to post etsy on and on my eventual website, I can use some of the space for a filming area to film my online classes, and I can spread out as much as I want without having to worry that a customer is going to see my mess. When it's time to tear up that space, we will know. For now, I am happy to be more INTENTIONAL with what I am choosing to do. ;)