Actually, I lied

“If nothing is straight, then nothing’s really crooked, either.”

At the end of my last post, I was lying.

I don’t like DIY—whatever that means. From climbing into the depths of some computer algorithm, it seems to mean spending a lot of time making unnecessary cosmetic alterations to things, speeding it up to make it seem like it only took three seconds.

Smiling while the world burns around you.

I only said I liked it because that’s what girls are supposed to do—happily, with no effort at all.

My enthusiasm was fake. I don’t want to contribute to the DIY anthem of making things seem way easier than they are, showing off how great my end result is without any practical instruction attached, hiding the guts of my house behind shiny things. Wasting plywood and paint.

The last four years have been brutal for me; to put it any other way would be a lie.

I get the highs of finishing things, and the immediate hangover of realizing how much is left to do: for my book, and my house.

I’ve got mountains of responsibility on my shoulders.

But I’m determined to gain more independence from this horrible feeling of living an unfinished life. I want my house to be in proper working order, and I want my book to find a loving home. Those each will probably require at least another year or two.

I’ll post about my projects, but I’m not going to waste time pretending to be someone I’m not.

I’ve been thinking a lot about electricity lately. I find it really fascinating, like a high stakes deductive logic puzzle. I might write an essay about that.

Oh, and I got my shower rod hanging from the ceiling. Maybe I’ll share a pic about that soon, and the wall scanner I used to help find the joists in the plaster.

It isn’t all that pretty.