A Room of My Own

taking risks and painting my writing office a dramatic new color

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This week I painted my writing office a dark, dramatic blue-black color, Gentleman’s Gray (which is ironically not for a gentleman’s space nor is it gray).

I had been brooding over this color for almost a year, ever since my youngest moved out of the space to college in another state. My husband and I really didn’t want to see her empty bedroom on every trip to the kitchen, so we swapped my old writing office upstairs and her old bedroom downstairs. But the paint color was still a pastel green chosen my her when we moved into our house in 2018.

I didn’t grow up in a house. My mother moved a lot within the same city, so every few years we’d have a new apartment. If I hadn’t bought my cottage myself in 2018, after working as a public teacher for 20 years at that point and getting a low mortgage rate, I would’ve never been able to afford it now. Needless to say, I am so grateful to finally have a stable home, which is probably why I started gardening—I felt the urgent need to put down roots.

Anyway, I love having my writing office relocated on first floor where it’s more accessible. But I stalled to change the color. It was the last step of admitting that I’ve hit a new stage in life.

Here’s a quick video of the before and after! Total cost: around $100 for paint and new curtains.

I really wanted it to feel like a writing cave, soothing and dramatic. Halfway through painting, I wondered if I had made a terrible decision. You know that moment when you are in deep enough that it feels too late to stop, and so you convince yourself that it’s only cold feet. My husband and some of my friends thought it might be too dark, but I didn’t listen to them, and I fucking love it!

I’m typing this post from my desk in my updated space, and it’s wild because…wow, if my old self could only see me now. Do I dare say it? This color feels—professional.

The room’s energy calls to me from the kitchen as I make my coffee, “Come, sit. Breathe. Share. Become. Magic happens here. ”

I’m embracing the small changes and slowly coming into my own.

I have a local writing critique group meeting this week, and they are reading an important section of my current manuscript, FIREWALL, where I tried a creative experiment. If it works, it’s gonna really work and be dramatic and cool. But if it doesn’t work, well, back to the drawing board I guess.

One of my group members always says that I’m so brave when creating since she sees me dive right in and take writing and editing risks so easily. It’s the opposite of my personality, and she’s right. I don’t take as many risks in life, but when creating, there’s this thing called an eraser or a delete button. It’s why I like writing. I can edit.

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Also this coming week, back to teaching for me. I’m going into my 25th year teaching public high school English. That’s a quarter of a century! Another teacher said that means we’ve spent more of our lives in high school than anywhere else. Geez, how old am I?

The dread of losing my creative time in my new creative space is starting to kick in. Just as the summer winds down, and I’ve finally learned the pace and needs of my mind and body, it’s back to a demanding bell schedule and soul-crushing workload.

This week I’ll be mentoring new faculty, setting up my classroom, and attending mandatory professional development. I’ll meet my students the week after that.

I have 144 high school students in my English classes this year, and I hope they are as nice as my students were last year. (When did teacher loads get so overwhelming? I remember years when I only had 90 students total, and that was hard.)

I’m wary with all the AI-integrated educational products being pushed to schools, particularly under the guise that it will save teachers time and help tutor students. Last year I caught ten students using AI to generate their essays for them—a topic for a future blog post.

I’m taking a teaching risk and going a little more old school this year. I bought my senior students composition notebooks to get off their Chromebooks more often and use them as writers’ notebooks for daily Warm Ups and other pre-writing activities. Staples had them on sale for only .50 cents each with a limit of 10 per customer. So of course, I dragged my husband with me each day for a week until I had enough :)

To all the teachers out there, I hope you have a wonderful 2024-2025 school year!

To all the writers out there, take a creative risk this week to shake things up.

Photo by Kimberly Farmer on Unsplash

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