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A much needed vacation…

By Dawn Sailors In Just Dawn

Well, woza. First off, sorry for the complete silence here on the blog for the past three weeks. I was starting to feel a little suffocated and needed to come up for air. A few weeks with one less thing on my plate was just what the doctor ordered though, so I’m back to update you on what’s been going on.

Quick note before I dive in: today is Vera’s 25th month pic, however since I’m incredibly behind on posting, look for that one later this week.

Ok let’s go. I’m going to start off with some updates. Number one is that I’ve come to realize that putting myself on a blogging schedule, while initiated with the best of time-management intentions, is just not working for me. It started to turn blogging into a job/responsibility that changed it from fun to work. And that’s not cool. So I’m exercising my right as a woman to change my mind and going back to my “this is my blog so I’ll post whenever I want to/can/feel like it with no pressure” ways.

I feel like this is part of the reason I needed to step away and reevaluate for a few weeks. Now that I have some perspective, I’ve realized that I can’t do everything, and that’s ok. Along those lines, I’m a little terrified of admitting this next part, but I feel like it’s part of my explanation and I guess my story. This is kind of a difficult subject for me, but I’ll do my best and keep it brief.

For as long as I can remember I’ve been a nervous person. I lived with it and used it to keep me moving (If I can’t sit still I might as well keep busy!!). However the sudden loss of a best friend more than four years ago started me on a downward track, and becoming a mother, suddenly having someone’s safety in my hands, furthered my anxiety to a point that was unhealthy and unmanageable. I found myself awake nearly every night for hours worried about security. I went into full on panic attacks when loved ones didn’t answer their phones immediately. Sometimes while driving I would find myself clenching the wheel so tightly my hands hurt and had no idea what I was anxious about. Add to this the everyday stresses of life and everything I take on, and I came to a breaking point. My body started to physically manifest symptoms of that anxiety, and while at an appointment to have everything checked out (convinced I had a terminal illness), I broke down in tears, telling my doctor all of this. It was terrifying and also such a relief.

I’ve been on anti-anxiety medication for the past several weeks, and I can honestly say that, while I don’t think I’m completely where I need to be yet, I feel better than I have in literally years, and I’m working to get there. That is obviously a big factor in my blog break and my renewed attempts to keep it fun and stress free, because clearly I don’t need the stress! :) But I love my little blog and the creative outlet it allows me.

So now that that’s out there, lets lighten things up! In the past few weeks, I’ve been forcing myself to take it easy, but that doesn’t mean I turn off the brain. What it means is that instead of my usual DIY antics, I’ve turned my attention to a few projects that I can sit back and let the experts handle for me. Yay!

One involves some outdoor work that we’re having quoted (I’ll get to that in another post down the line), the other involves a new carpenter friend of mine and this little sketch I drew up for our dining room.

In case you can’t remember or are new here, this is an old pic but basically still what our dining room currently looks like:

(Sorry it’s not a great angle to show where the bench will go… use your imaginations.) Since moving in, I’ve had a dream of building bench/window seating in this room, and we are finally (hopefully) moving towards that goal- assuming the quote we get back isn’t out of budget. I can’t wait. Nothing concrete yet, but I’m so excited it might as well be done already. I’ll keep you posted.

Besides all this, one of the things that’s kept me the busiest is designing and decorating a whole new office space for my real job. My official title at the graphic design/marketing company I word for is “Vice President of Creative”, which basically means I have a lot of fun making things pretty. In this case it also means I got to play interior designer when we moved from our old office of 20+ years to a brand new space that was a concrete shell before we customized it to fit us. I got to design everything from the floor plan to the decor (including a custom string-art installation created by me and my brain-twin, co-worker & friend, Ashley) and it has turned out so well. I’ll be posting more about that and some photos of the space at a later date when everything is officially wrapped up, but for now it has calmed down enough to take that major project off my plate, for the most part anyway.

In other news, I just got back from a little girls-weekend trip with Dania and my BFF Sarah (you remember Sar) and it was so much fun. Just what I needed. Besides getting my book signed by the Bloggess herself (more on that later too) it was a great chance to rest, sleep in a bit, shop way too much, and do something a little crazy…

Yep, much to the hub’s dismay, I came back to NE with tattoo number three. And I LOVE it. (Brett’s coming around to it too, I think..) This is the first one I’ve gotten that was completely my decision (the first was a matching one with my sister when we were 18 and the second a group tribute to our lost fourth twin). I feel such a sense of ownership and empowerment this time. I didn’t have to get anyone’s opinion or sign off. I did it just for me. And that’s a great feeling.

As for the tattoo itself, it says “make everything beautiful” – a shortened version of my favorite quote and life motto: “I am going to make everything around me beautiful— that will be my life.” I don’t think I could have chosen a better or more appropriate phrase for where I am and how I approach life, both literally and figuratively.

I hope you’ve been doing great since I was last here. I’m so excited to be back! Happy Monday friends!

 

PS~ If you like my favorite quote too, you should check out the hand-lettered poster I just listed in my etsy shop. Shameless plug, I know… Ok, bye!