What's your yellow brick road?

I had a “yellow brick road” revelation two weeks ago while attending my first interior design course. It’s a class on the business of interior design. While sitting in the class, I realized that most of the students in it have taken some of the interior design courses already so I felt intimated that I didn’t know a lot and that maybe I shouldn’t be in this class just yet. Then I thought I probably know more than most of them. And that even though I don’t have those other classes behind me I have something that they probably don’t have. I’ve already ran a business. I was ahead of the game. I knew the ins and outs of the day to day minutia. I knew my failures and my successes. I look back on that time as some of my happiest moments, I lived the good life and that’s when I came to my “yellow brick road” revelation.

I sat back and listened to my professor speak about how he got to where he was today and how he started this program at the university and I thought about my own life and my own “yellow brick road”. I thought about what I was doing now in life, what I had done in my past, and how that has all lead me to here. The song says “follow the yellow brick road” but in the movie Dorothy had the option to venture off and to choose one way or the other. The red brick road or the yellow brick road. What were my choices in life that lead me to that class? What if I had opted for a the other road? See I’m a ruminator. I think things over and over again and try to figure out why something is the way it is or why I am at this place in my life. I go over my past and my red and my yellow brick roads and try to figure out at just what point in time got me to here. That’s a ruminator. It’s who I am. So as I still try to figure out where to go from here I think about how I even got there. How I ended up in that class. All I could come up to was last winter while re-doing our kitchen I looked at Tom and said this is what I like. This is what I enjoy. This is what I want to know more about. And from that point last February I went out and got books, searched the net, reached out to different schools and decided that I was going to go full throttle. I was going to sign up for classes in interior design, I was going to take sewing lessons and painting classes, I was going to read, (Something more than just a magazine. It would be books!) and I was going to go home after work and try new things. Life wasn’t just going to be work, work, work, weekends and back to work. It was going to be work, home doing something, weekends taking on big projects and then back to work. I planned to feel accomplished by the time Monday mornings would roll around. And as always life does get in the way and sometimes it’s hard to stick to those plans but I told myself that I needed to start doing that. Because at the end of the day that would ultimately make me happy. Doing something that I would feel accomplished about would get me to my happiest yellow brick road. The road that would lead me to what made me feel good about life, what made me feel accomplished. That sense of accomplishment that I used to get in my previous job when I’d redo the store window or have someone acknowledge the collection I just put on the floor. The sense of pride that someone loves what I created.

So even though I don’t know where this road will ultimately take me I know that those many roads I had followed in my past got me to where I am right now. And I can say I’m a lot happier now than I was a year ago because I’m following my dreams again. Following our dreams. And when I awoke this morning I couldn’t wait to get dressed and run to our garage to see how my latest project turned out. I slaved over our new desk this weekend. Started it last Saturday and finished stripping it yesterday. (I'll eventually get around to a tutorial on how to strip the veneer. I know I even owe our followers a video of Tom's Halloween display. That had to take a backseat this weekend. I'll have it posted by end of week. Promise.) I took out all the drawers and re-stained the inside and side panels but not the front as I will paint that. (It’s a good idea to stain the drawers if you don’t plan on painting the insides. I never paint the insides as they tend to then get tight and stick. By staining the drawers it will lock in any smells and give the drawers a clean finish. Even if you are planning to line them as I am leaning towards it still gives it a cleaner appearance and kills any smells that might be lingering behind when refurbishing an antique.) I’m still undecided what I’m going to do with this piece. I’m thinking of staining the top and then painting the base old white with a distressed tone and a dark wax finish. The hip cup is the leather inlay. I've tried to clean it up as you can tell from the picture but it’s taken a good beating so I’m on the fence and thinking I might paint the leather inlay the old white. I think it will look beautiful with the dark wood top. Or maybe I'll give the top a crackle finish. Guess we will just have to wait and see what I ultimately decide. 

Ideas? Suggestions? Thoughts? Because I can really use them right now!!