After looking at the Facebook page of a mutual friend, my friend asked: What did she do to get such a great life? I replied, She knows how to edit.
Our mutual friend travels the world alone, meeting interesting people, doing fascinating things. She doesn’t seem to spend a lot of time actually working. It appears that her job is just to be fabulous. Her life is pretty exciting and everything she shows us is the truth, but it’s not the whole story.
We all do it. I am more than happy to show you my DIY triumphs! And more often than not, I keep my failures to myself.
And there’s the armoire I put in a blog post not long ago. It was coated in a shiny layer of eggplant paint and, ultimately, not salvageable. Between the thick drips of poorly applied oil-based paint from its previous owner and something that got into the varnish I was using (sawdust perhaps) it ended up in a greyish mess. One day, when I can stand to look at it again, I’ll haul it to the curb.
Speaking of the curb, that’s where my funky old cabinet met its end. Derek brought it home from Goodwill as a project for me. I painted it with espresso chalk paint and put it in our living room. My husband doesn’t often have strong feelings about furnishings but he admitted to “hating” the cabinet. Alright, I thought, I’ll brighten it up with some heritage green Cottage Paint. No dice. His hatred only grew.
I posted it on Kijiji for $25. Not a single bite. We moved on to other things and it sat in the basement for a long while before finding its way to the roadside on trash pick-up day. I was certain that someone would take it away for free. Only my brother-in-law up the street showed any interest but my sister-in-law vetoed it. In the end, the trash collector was the only one who bothered to pick it up.
And then there was my attempt at doing a Warhol-style painting with Spice as my subject. I don’t know why I didn’t mark it off into quarters. Once I got underway I realized I’d made this weird patchwork, and I couldn’t do anything about it short of starting all over.
This canvas is now in DIY heaven along with the cabinet, and a bunch of other attempts at greatness that fell way short. We all have these moments. We just don’t always show them to the world.
Why do people hate to make mistakes? We all make them. They’re as common as dirt. As Billy Joel sings, our mistakes may be the only thing we can truly call our own. Yet people hate them.