27
Lock the Shed Studio

Take full responsibility for yourself—for the time you take up and the space you occupy.

—Maya Angelou

Two years ago I had a semi-manic episode related to a horrible brown shed.

When we bought our house, a dilapidated wooden lean-to butted out from the back of our garage. Since the day we moved in, I have felt a certain compulsion to tear down that shed and rebuild something in its place that could serve as a studio for me, a room of one’s own as Virginia Woolf says.

This compulsion reached fever pitch when all of a sudden I knew that if I could just get that shed torn down and a simple little space built in its place, then my mental health would be magically restored and life’s intensity would immediately dissipate.

I’m not sure if you’ve ever attached your happiness, much less your sanity, to something getting demoed or built or remodeled, but if you have, then you know how these things grow in intensity. The countertops become our key to joy. The nasty carpet is the one thing standing in the way of a deeply fulfilling life. And so on.

What became clear is that I needed to let it all go. I needed to stop banking my emotional equilibrium on whether or not this shed was going to be transformed. You know how it goes: money, time, priorities, la, la, la.

So I did. I let it go. But here’s the kicker: two years later it finally happened! We took down the infested appendage and rebuilt a little space in its place. The new shed is part storage and part my space, but I’m hoping—help me, Marie Kondo—to pare down some of what we’re storing in there so I can claim as many square inches of this new space as possible.

After the shed was finished, I fell into a euphoric trance, walking some of my very favorite and most-inspirational things down from the house to the new space. At the moment, it’s highly unglamorous, but it’s gonna be fabulous. I can just feel it.

I told Beth-with-Dreads about the shed-turned-studio, and do you know the first thing she asked me?

“Does it have a lock?”

Isn’t that perfect? Does it have a lock. (I laughed out loud.)

“Yes, in fact, it does,” I told her.

“Good,” she said. “It’s good for your kids to know that it’s Mommy’s space.”

I’m learning to become the gatekeeper of my own soul. I get to decide who comes in and out and when and with what frequency. I get to close the door sometimes, even lock it, and keep the darlings and their precious overstimulation at bay, even for twenty minutes.

And I’ve begun spending time in the space. A little here. A little there. I have galvanized buckets with paints and brushes. Pieces of wood. Empty frames.

One time I went down to the shed, and right when I sat down for a moment of deep spiritual introspection, the neighbor turned on his leaf blower. And, wouldn’t you know, I couldn’t hear my soul over the noise. So I went back up to the house. Another time I went down to the shed with the best intentions to get lost in a painting project, and it was not one degree cooler than 115 degrees, and I had to go back up to the house for fear of heatstroke. Sometimes I go in there and flies attack me or I have to pee. If I open the door to the shed for some fresh air, I see the gorgeous olive tree that’s parked right outside—but I also see electric blue foam littering the yard from the disintegrating bumpers on the kids’ trampoline.

In other words, nothing about this is perfect.

Oh well.

I am more and more convinced that catching up with our intuitive, creative self is one of the most essential things we can do. Whether your creative expression is painting or cooking or gardening or tinkering with car engines or making jewelry, letting her speak to you will change you, energize you, and the inspiration will spill into other areas of your life as well.

Two years ago we moved home from the Middle East. As is the case with moves, a few things were shoved into the back of the garage and haven’t been opened since. One of those things was an aqua cabinet, called a coffin cabinet—I was told by the dealer who sold it to me—because it is shaped like coffins of old. I got it at a vintage shop years ago and I bought it because I loved the color and because we were getting ready to move overseas and I was making purchases to soothe my anxiety.

These past two years, the cabinet was sitting in the back of our garage, still sealed from the move. Steve and I carried it to the shed, and I tore off the plastic wrap and cardboard. I opened the cabinet and pulled out all the packing paper to begin loading in treasures, and I found something that took my breath away:

Inside the cabinet, underneath all the packing paper, was a dried bougainvillea bloom that had been waiting for me these two years. Waiting for me to find it at just the right time. Bougainvillea is like a divine wink to me. Some people find hearts in nature or lucky pennies. I find bougainvillea petals and it’s like God is saying to me, “I see you and you’re on the right track and keep listening and keep creating and I love you.” One bougainvillea bloom says all that to me. And this one, transported all the way from the Middle East, said all that and more. It was an affirmation and a confirmation and in some kind of weirdly perfect way, a complete and total YES to following my brazen heart.

Everywhere I go these days, I see the bright blooms of bougainvillea. It’s everywhere here in Southern California, of course, but what I keep seeing—what keeps speaking to me—are the paper-like petals that have left the vine and are scattered here and there. They seem to blow off the vines easily in our breezes, and so they’re strewn all over the ground.

A few flashes of hot pink at my feet on a neighborhood run or in the tall wheat-colored grasses around my house are like nature’s confetti.

I read somewhere that bougainvillea symbolizes protection. I can see that. Not only is it beautiful but it also has sharp spines that can poke you if you’re not paying attention. And it also vines in a way that creates thick “hedges of protection.” Somewhere else I read that bougainvillea symbolizes passion, which also works for me.

I’ll go with both: protection and passion. Seems like just about everything a girl could want in life.

In my twenty minutes of soul time, I ask God if there’s anything he wants to tell me. Over and over again, he says, “Follow your inner artist. Honor your inner artist. Listen to your inner artist. Welcome your inner artist.”

It’s certainly not a far stretch to consider that all these things—the shed, the twenty minutes of soul time, the inner artist, the bougainvillea—are all connected. The meaning of the bougainvillea puts perfect words to it for me: protection and passion. I am longing for a harbor for my soul and also, in the safety of that place, an opportunity for expression.

It seems so fitting to think about the feminine image of God sitting with me in this space—both a guide toward my greatest passions and a wise protector too, showing me how to honor my soul by being a gatekeeper.

Beth-with-Dreads encourages me to allow this space to also be a place of nonproductive creating, the kind of work we do that is simply for pleasure. Some of us are so disconnected to what brings us pleasure. It’s felt taboo to even consider what’s pleasing to us, especially if it’s not practically productive.

I certainly take my laptop down to the shed, but not always. The shed is a place of sacred offering, of worship, where I protect my soul so I can pour out passion. It’s an unfinished little rectangle—nothing much in light of the whole world—a place to play, to get lost in a world of my own making.

Steve had the kids in the hot tub while I poked around in the new space. Before I joined them, I cut a long, flowering tendril off a potted bougainvillea near our front door. I put the stem in the white hobnail vase that was my grandmother’s and then my mother’s and I put the simple arrangement in the center of the table I set up in the studio.

I closed and locked the door and went off to find my family.

Reflection & Expression

If you were creating your own space, what would you put in it?

For Your Brazen Board

Add images of the elements you listed above.