home design as a coping mechanism

or, I have a pretty new office to show off!

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My partner, Will, always says that he can tell a lot about my mental state based on how frequently I talk to him about paint colors. It’s a joke but it’s also not, though he is the first person to make a connection between how obsessively I tackle home design projects and my emotional well-being.

The worse I feel, the more I hyperfocus on my living environment.

This makes sense, I suppose. During the pandemic, when we were all trapped in our homes, DIY design content really took off and people began to pay a lot of attention to their domestic spaces since they couldn’t leave them. I’m an aesthetically-minded person anyway, especially when it comes to my home. I want to live in a house that is beautiful, but also warm, comfortable, and functional (hello, IC in Libra in my 4H¹). Before Will and I moved this fall, I made digital renderings of all the main rooms in our new house so we could hit the ground running with paint and wallpaper before we moved our belongings in.

yes, for real

When the outside world starts to feel really scary or overwhelming, an even more amplified nesting impulse kicks in. I start to look around my home at all of the half-finished projects, or cabinet knobs I’ve been meaning to change, or art that hasn’t made it onto the wall. I start thinking that the risers on my stairs look plain or maybe my fireplace needs disco ball tiles or perhaps there is a way to hang a light fixture over the dining room table. I order ceiling medallions off Amazon.

On the surface it seems frivolous, but it comes from somewhere very real. In a world that is (in some places literally) on fire, my home is a place I can control. It’s also the most intimate space, one that I can tailor to my exact needs. And it’s where, when everything else feels big and terrible, I can be safe. Maybe it’s a bit like doomsday prepping—some people make go bags and stock up on non-perishables; I try to make my home as aesthetically-pleasing as possible so that if I have to spend most of my time there, it’s somewhere I love being.

There are much worse coping mechanisms to have, I suppose.

That is all a very long way of saying that I’ve been obsessively browsing peel-and-stick tiles online. Will and I had been looking for a place together for over a year before we bought this house in August. We’d been functionally living together, but we had separate condos and neither one was quite large enough for two writers who work from home and have two children.

Will and I each have our own bedrooms, something that was a non-negotiable when we were house hunting. After my divorce and then the end of another nesting relationship, I swore I never wanted to live with a partner again. As I come to terms with just how neurodivergent I am, my need for my own space and a decent amount of alone time has become very apparent. Will also likes to have his own space and this arrangement works really well for us.

A bonus is that the closet in my bedroom was large enough that I could turn it into a hideaway office, giving me that coveted work-from-home space.

I always love seeing where other writers work, so I thought I’d share my new office with you all since my brain has been very “no thoughts, just vibes” lately.