Go to Your Room

Now that we’re getting ready for me to retire, it’s clear that I will need a space of my own.  The rare occasion that I telecommute puts Paul in a funk – he feels like if I’m in the house he needs to leave.  So we’ve decided to move the guest room downstairs and convert the upstairs room into my office.  Then, when I start to get on Paul’s nerves, he can tell me to go to my room.

My room.  An interesting concept.  I want my room to encourage both creativity and serenity.  Hoping these are not mutually exclusive, I consulted my good friend Sonia who, among other things, knows Feng Shui, the Chinese art or practice of creating harmonious surroundings that enhance the balance of yin and yang, as in arranging furniture or determining the siting of a house.

Feng Shui is based on the five elements in a person’s life: metal, water, fire, earth, wood, being in balance.  Sonia explained to me that I have way too much metal and not nearly enough water.  Too much metal means “my desire to keep everything in place gets in the way of normal living,” and not enough water “leaves you feeling cut off from the abundance and flow of life.”  Ugh.  Don’t want to go either of those places.

When I visualized the room, I pictured browns, blacks, and reds. Sonia is encouraging me to use blues, blacks, purples, and some yellow for creative energy.  Purple?  I don’t even like purple.  She told me that yes; I could have a little bit of red.  Not sure I’m up for painting the walls blue.  Or yellow, although a yellow ceiling has possibilities. 

Sonia encouraged me to make the room a display of my own creativity, but until I have poster prints of the jacket covers of the many novels I will someday write, my creativity is limited to scrapbook pages.  No problem, she says.  Find a few of my favorites and frame them.  This also has possibilities.

Next step – find some great fabric and start to rethink the room design.  Oh, and get my son and a few of his able-bodied friends to start moving furniture downstairs.