My Walls Are Each a Different Color

My student loan came in Friday, and the first thing I did was run down to the hardware store. I bought four shades of blue paint (shock! Who would have thought I'd choose blue!?!), some six foot planks of wood, an electric drill, brackets to turn the planks into shelves with, a roller and pan, and some masking tape.

I painted each of my four walls a different shade of blue, with the lightest shade standing in opposition to the darkest. I also forced myself to make the lightest shade go on the longest wall and the darker shade to go on the wall with windows, so it's the color I used the least. I love dark blue, but dark colors can eat a room up, especially a small room where the lighting's not the best.

And I have to say; my room is now beautiful. If you've never seen a room where every wall is a different color, you make think it wouldn't be very pretty. But when it's done right, it's very cool. It looks great, and now my room is all personalized and feels just right to me. I know I'm nesting, but I can't help it. I even put up three shelves six feet long along a wall.

I've decided to paint one room in my apartment every weekend until it is fabulous. Doing just one room at a time is relaxing, and keeps me from being overwhelmed by the project. Next weekend, the living room will become a cool shade of lavender. I don't know what I'm doing with the Hallway yet, and of course Aral will make her own decisions about her room. I'm at a loss about our tiny bathroom with dull dingy turquoise tiles.

I also paid a lot of bills this weekend. When I say a lot, I mean every bill I ran up since I got the apartment over sixty days ago - phone, cable, long distance, electric. I have to confess that the biggest thing I'm looking forward too after graduation is getting out of this waiting-for-the-student-loan-to-come-in cycle. It's a big trap, and I've been told (though I don't believe it) that after I graduate people will pay me a good deal of money to be an archivist. That will be interesting.

I also decided to quit my part time job at the Boston Architectural Center's slide library. I've learned a lot from the job and was glad to have it when I needed it, but I just can't keep up with both of my part time jobs and graduate school any longer. The schedule I've been on has been turning me into this nervous, overly busy wound up person I don't particularly like. Worse, it was starting to affect my performance in everything - I've simply been doing too many things at once to do all of them well. And it's time, you know, for me to do all the stuff I've always been saying I was going too - get my master's, get published, get on with it. So I'll continue to be poor. I can still make the rent with my loans and my little part time job at Harvard. I'll get by, it'll be Okay, and everything's going to work out the way I want. Or, at least, that's what I'm telling myself, anyway.