All the uncharacteristic relaxing over the past couple of days must have gone straight to my head. For when I returned to the studio today, I got a bug up my ass to rearrange my space.
I wanted to figure out a way to do some woodworking where I could use a flexible shaft to power sand and carve some boards, without getting wood dust all over my jewelry bench and tools. So I figured by simply switching a cabinet and an extra jeweler’s bench I had, I’d be able to easily set up a separate area for the woodworking and other messy tasks.
Well, that’s how it worked out in my head, but reality is never that simple. It required removing all sorts of stuff from drawers and shelves to make things light enough to move around. And then I realized I’d have to reorder just about everything for efficiency. The final straw was that my perception of size failed me completely, and the pieces that needed to be moved turned out to be larger than they actually appeared based on my eyeballing the situation. Measure first, you say? Me? Uh, uh.
We carried on anyhow and finally had to face the fact that I needed to get rid of a desk entirely in order to fit everything into place. Of course, that desk was filled with stuff I needed, and I had to find a way of redistributing all that stuff to fit it in somewhere else within the designated space.
I wandered from one area to another, and from one piece of furniture to another, trying to figure out where to start to make some headway so I could proceed with the rearranging. But, by then the task had become so complex and overwhelming that I had a complete meltdown, right down to the point of collapsing in a chair and sobbing that it was all just too much and I couldn’t deal with all this crap anymore and that I’d just have to just throw it all out. That may sound stupid and childish but I was truly devastated and totally at a loss as to how I could possibly ever get things back in order.
To his credit, C. came to my rescue and instead of getting mad at me, he helped me look at the space in a different way and helped me see where to begin, and started moving things around for me. Once he got started, I could see that a solution might be possible, if not immediately attainable. So I calmed down and started to move stuff. We actually got the desk free and moved it out into the alley, and by the time we left things started to look better, but the job is still overwhelming.
This shows just one view, from one angle. In this small picture it doesn’t look nearly as daunting as it does large as life. I am so not looking forward to going in tomorrow to face what awaits me.
