I am an overly frequent user of social media. I have long perused Facebook, all while having a conversation with myself about how much time I am giving away for something as useless as sitting at a slot machine. I wish I could say those conversation have made me more aware of how often I could be doing better things, but the truth is I let my time slip away like I’ve got it banked in a Swiss account that even the Grim Reaper couldn’t touch.
My social media drug of choice for months now has been Instagram. I started dipping my toe into it this summer, taking and posting photos of our house and garden. There is a twofold reason for this. I have always loved decorating and if I could make money doing store displays, which I’ve done plenty of in my life, I’d quit my accounting gig and just do that. Retail display work, however, is part of the package of working retail and so I had to let that one go when I could never get out of a pay scale that exceeded ten dollars an hour. Crunching numbers and paying the bills for a business is at the lucrative end of how not to make much money over the course of your life. The other reason is that friends and family, who know how much I love all things house, have encouraged me to write a decorating blog and I have thought about it, but it is something that I clearly don’t have the time for with my part-time job and overloading on social media.
The rose that is posting on social media, though, has started to turn brown on the edges. I started to notice it a few months ago, these accounts with the perfect homes, the tablescape for fall, the perfect outfit to wear for the dinner party around the tablescape, the boots, the blanket scarf, the throw pillows, the sofa, the newly painted rooms that were newly painted a year ago BUT YOU GUYS THE BUFFALO PLAID. Overall, it seems to me that most of these accounts are women far younger than me and I couldn’t fathom having that kind of disposable income twenty years ago. That turns out to be something I’m grateful for most of the time. There isn’t much that is new around here – most of it has come from estate sales, flea markets, antique malls, Craigslist, and from the side of the road, and therein lies the untold stories of these things in a different house with different people.
Oh but…..
I study the photos, enlarge them, envy them, and even though I know better I have to remind myself often that comparison is the thief of joy.
Two weeks ago the very styled Instagrammed Christmas decor went up and my feed was flooded with dozens of pictures of trees and mantels that were decked in glittery goodness and I started to feel my chest tighten. We were going to Portugal, we were returning on the weekend, we were working two days and then driving to Chicago for Thanksgiving until Sunday. Sunday??? That’s the 26th of November. Why even bother? It’s like the season will practically be over by then for the savvy decor minded and in those perfectly styled photos was a decorated linen closet.
Somebody decorated their linen closet.
We headed to Portugal and had a fabulous time and I forgot that I should be decorating my home and now my linen closet for Christmas. Instead I was grateful that my husband working and me working allowed us the means to travel to an incredible place.
And I came back with a new perspective which is the pot of gold at the end of the travel rainbow. I saw churches that made me so overwhelmed I couldn’t talk, sculptures so preserved that I thought surely they could not be a thousand years old, cobble stone walks that have been traversed for centuries, a castle, custard tarts from a secret family recipe from the 1800s.
I saw that the things that make a life are never going to be found where I have been looking and that when the paying jobs are over there will be other work to do. Worthy and quiet things like packing bird seed and heading off to a park bench to sit with an old friend, and watching joy unfold for those who choose to live a life beyond comparison.
