Initiative- A Dreamers Hope

Initiative-A Dreamers Hope

I’ve had an exceptionally difficult time finding the initiative to write about this week’s #FoodForThought prompt- Initiative. The irony is not lost on me. But this week has been exceptionally odd. While the last thing most of us want to hear about is COVOD-19, it seems to be the one thing we’re all thinking about. Non-stop. It almost seems harder not to think about it than it is to find things to stay busy.

And while I don’t want this post to be about COVID-19, because I believe it’s occupied enough time and space in each of our minds, I think we all work through our emotional distress differently. Some of us write, some of us clean. Some bake, paint, draw or carve. There are so many things to do that all this time available seems to be just the initiative we’ve all needed.

In my home was a room that was not really big enough for anything more than an office. Personally, I don’t like to work in a prescribed area with the same walls every day, it’s hard on the imagination. When I write, I try a different room, a different location. Sometimes (before the way life is now) I would write at a park or a coffee shop. No, an office wouldn’t do.

After a little debate and a lot of online searching, we decided to use one half of the room as pantry storage, which would give me more counter and cupboard space. Something that I so desperately need. The other half will become a closet. Not any closet, my closet, in my bedroom. As a woman in my late thirties, how had I never thought that a closet was a necessity before?

Mister K and I have lived in the same home for 15 years. We’ve raised two children here. There is not enough space for all of us and our personalities anymore, but I’m apprehensive to let it go, knowing it contains four peoples, fifteen years of memories (except our youngest, he’s only got twelve). We’ve always made sure that they had their own spaces, and that those spaces were a reflection of their characters. And as parents are so wont to do, we put what we wanted aside.

Now that our children are a little older, Mister K has finally agreed to let me redo our bedroom. For as long as I can remember it’s been a functional room at best, but never aesthetic. So it’s exciting to finally make our room an extension of ourselves. We’ve decided on a red, white and grey theme, which sounds very grown-up to me.

We’ve matched paint swatches, bought and tinted paint, bought all the materials needed to renovate. When it came time to buy our new cabinetry and storage units, we ran into a snag. There is a virus, taking over the world, shutting everything down. We cannot order these shelves anywhere. When a country the size of Canada goes on lockdown, it’s hard to get certain things. So we’re waiting, we may have to wait three months. That amount of time seems almost unbearable. I feel as if I’m a child waiting for Christmas. Is the outbreak over yet, we can we go out and play?

I know that this type of mindset will not be of benefit to me, so I needed something else. Yes, our project is on hold, or is it? It seems that now I have time to do so many other things that I wanted to do. I wanted to have a collage of handmade art above our headboard, and recently I have the time to start that. I’ve chosen lips to be the theme and I hope to paint at least eight different patterns. I have new curtains to hang, and small touches like the eye bolts that Mister K has so cleverly designed into our ceiling and floor, to place.

It seems to me that maybe we’ve been given the time to take some initiative to do the things we want to do or maybe should be doing, but have put off. This week alone I’ve gone hiking, made soap (the old fashioned way, with fat and lye), and painted a picture to start the artwork in my newly redecorated bedroom. I’ve cleaned and baked and reorganized. I’ve called people I haven’t spoken to in more time than I care to count, just to make sure they were doing alright. If that’s only the first week, imagine what I can do in three months.

Sometimes initiative doesn’t look like much more than a dreamer’s hope, but we should keep dreaming and hoping anyway.