Outgrown
The boxes are still everywhere. We're days into unpacking and I haven't touched the studio yet. I haven't been able to. Every time I stand in it, it feels too cramped to actually work in, which is not the update I expected to be writing this week.
There's a specific feeling I keep landing on, and it took me a minute to place it. It's the feeling of going back to a childhood bedroom, or a college dorm room, and realizing you don't fit in it anymore — not because the room changed, but because you did. The room is exactly as small as it always was. I'm the one who's different.
I have more supplies now than I did when this space made sense on paper. I'm working in mixed media more than I used to, and mixed media does not travel light. It requires different papers, different mediums, texture pastes––tools I didn't own a few years ago. All of it is sitting in boxes right now because there's nowhere in the actual room to put it. I measured. It doesn't fit.
My husband, who thinks in measurements and load-bearing logic, has already run the numbers twice and come back with the same answer both times: it doesn't fit. I appreciate the honesty. I don't love the math. I don't think the version of me who planned for this space was the same version of me who needs it now.
So I don't have an answer yet for what happens next. I'm trying to be at peace with that, and mostly I am. There's a difference between not knowing and panicking, and I'm doing the first one, not the second. But I'd be lying if I said the boxes weren't getting to me a little. They're not going anywhere on their own, and neither is the discomfort of looking at a room I can't quite work in.
What I do know: this isn't going to stop me from making things. I don't know yet if that means finding more room, rethinking what this space actually needs to hold, or something I haven't landed on. I'll figure it out. I always do, eventually — it just usually takes longer than I want it to.
If you're on Instagram you've probably seen the boxes in the background of everything this week. That's the real state of things right now, not a styled version of it.
And if you want the version of this that's even less figured-out than the blog — Studies from the Studio is where that lives. Today's the last day to catch the July print before it ships.
I don't have a tidy ending for this one. Just boxes, a room that might be too small, and a stubborn refusal to let that be the whole story.
Back next week, hopefully with more of an answer.
— Shelby
