I posted an article from one of my favorite blogs, “Addicted2Decorating,” sometime last week on my Facebook page, and the more I thought about it the more I wanted to write something about it myself because it’s such excellent advice for every area of life. I can’t remember how much I’ve said about the author of this blog, so let me briefly recap: Her name is Kristi, she lives in Texas, is married to Matt who has M.S. and is confined to a wheelchair, and she is absolutely fearless about plunging into home improvement projects. (I do tend to have a few quibbles about her color choices, especially right now her decision to put navy-blue shutters on her house when white ones would have looked so much better, but so be it.) One of the reasons I like her so much is that she has extremely strong opinions (does that remind you of anyone?) and is quite willing to share them. She first came to my attention because I was looking for some info on chalk paint, and when I googled the term her article “Why I Don’t Use Chalk Paint” came up. She saved me from using a product that in the end wouldn’t have worked very well for my purposes. (I ended up not painting the piece of furniture at all and just leaving it with the factory finish, at least for now. Words cannot express how much I hate painting.)
Okay. Usually her posts are updates about her many, many projects. She and Matt bought a small fixer-upper house several years ago and she has accomplished miracles with it. Sometimes her brother helps her with bigger items and sometimes she hires contractors, but I’d say that from what I’ve read the majority of her stuff is done by her own two hands. She uses power tools! She tears out walls! She builds built-ins! Her energy seems unstoppable. I get tired just reading her posts. What an inspiration she is. If you’d like to follow her blog, follow this link and scroll down to the “subscribe” section on the sidebar. I promise you that you’ll love her even if you have no plans to pick up a paintbrush or a hammer.
Last week, though, she wrote a post that should have an impact on everyone: “The Most Important Thing You Could Ever Learn from Me and My Blog.” And what is that thing? The recognition that everyone makes mistakes but that only those who forge ahead anyway ever get anywhere. Something like that. The idea that most of us are too timid, too afraid to be wrong, and so we never try to do something challenging. Here are some representative quotations:
“Most people are afraid of making mistakes.”
“You will never know the joy of victory until you conquer your fear of failure.”
“Do you want to be really good at something? Then you have to be okay with failure. You have to embrace mistakes. There’s no getting around it. That doesn’t mean that failure and mistakes are definitely going to happen. You may try and find that you’re a total natural at whatever it is you’re doing. But a fear of failure and of making mistakes will paralyze you and keep you from ever trying. And that, my friends, is the most important lesson I could ever hope to impart to you on this blog.”
Well, I don’t want to overstep my 200-word quotation limit, so I’ll stop there. Really, honestly and truly, you should read the entire post and then you should subscribe to her blog updates, even if you have no interest whatsoever in DIY docorating. (She’s like a friendly, folksy, practical Stephen Covey, if you will. )
Oh, and a little update on the patio toilet situation: You may remember that I wrote a post awhile ago about how much I hate making phone calls and how this distaste has caused me problems. Well, yesterday my father-in-law suggested that I at least check with their regular trash pickup company before trekking to the dump, and guess what? They’ll pick it up for free. It will be out in the trash on Friday. So all this time that this unattractive object has been sitting on our patio it could have been gone. All I had to do was ask. A further life lesson there, perhaps?