Painting and Personality

Good afternoon ladies!


Your pants have officially been in my house that is not yet my house! This is exciting!


The reason I was there was that I had to do a “pre-delivery inspection” which is where you go around the entire house with a roll of green painters tape and put a piece on anything that isn’t quite right. The majority of these things are either nail pops (a bump in the wall about the size of a dime or quarter caused by movement of the drywall or nail when the house settles) or painting touch-ups (the guy who did the painting was doing a quick job and the paint isn’t even or is touching things it isn’t suppose to).


When I got to the house the guy from the housing company was already there and had started putting up green tape in the entry area. By the time we were done there was green tape everywhere and the guy joked “If you wanted to paint the walls green that could have been arranged”. So basically my whole house has been repainted today to get ready for my closing on Thursday.


I’m not completely surprised with this outcome. I’ve always been very particular about the quality and order of my living space. My friend Tamina used to think it was funny to pretend to accidentally brush against something in my room so that she could watch me straighten it so it was once again in its place. This exacting kind of quality is often extended to the work I do at school or at my job when I have one. I’m very precise in making sure that the quality of my work is as high as I can make it and I really appreciate when others do the same.


In the last few years I’ve started to drop the ball a bit in terms of how organized my room is. Where back in my elementary school days there was not even a speck of dust on my floor now there are semi-ordered piles consisting of textbooks or folded clothes. It’s not the sprawl of a regular teenager’s room but my previous self would be a little bit horrified.


Let’s go with that and try out this comparing present and past selves shall we?


The biggest change that I’ve seen in myself over the last few years is a bit of gradual relaxation. It seems like a relatively insignificant thing when you compare it to the assertions that someone has become so much more “caring” and “confident” or has gone through “life changing experiences” but it’s what I view as what really happened.


I could say that I’ve become more comfortable in my own skin (or image or personality) but I think that has a lot to do with the gradual realization that it resists when I try to pull it into a different shape. I tried often when I was younger to act more outgoing and more personable. The most recent attempt was during grade nine in high school. I thought “Here’s a brand new school. No one knows me at all and I can be whoever I want to be so I’m going to try and be that person I want to be”.


While self-improvement is certainly an honourable goal what I’ve found is that, instead of trying to be or become something that I’m not, it’s better to try and be the person that you are. It’s just as difficult as trying to meet up with those arbitrary personality goals, if not more so, to figure out exactly what you’re working with and start polishing up the best parts.


Basically the point of this ramble is that while it’s perfectly acceptable to put a fresh coat of paint over the wall of your house it isn’t the smartest idea to paint over your personality, even if the paint looks really good.


Cheers,


Dina



P.S. I feel like we've been pretty serious for the last little bit so I offer this as a way to lighten the mood...
My ass, your pants. :P