Sunday, November 26, 2006


I painted my bedroom RED today!
Of course I had plenty of time to think while I did it, so here are some of the lessons I learned..

When I decided to paint my room red, everyone close to me tried to discourage me. The said: “its too dark...its difficult to do on your own.. its too messy.. it’ll make the room look smaller.. just hire someone to do it.. green is more relaxing…”

Now that it’s done and looks AMAZING, they’re all going to tell me what a great idea it was, what a great job I did, how they’ve always wanted to do something similar and didn’t have the guts.

Lesson n# 1
When someone tries to discourage you and you really know/feel it’s the right thing to do.. Ignore them! Take chances! The regret of messing up something is never as great as the regret of not giving it a try.

Before you paint the walls, you need to paint the borders so that you don’t mess up the floor and ceiling. Its time consuming, detailed work, but if you don’t do it you end up colouring out of the lines!

Lesson n#2
Spiritual boundaries to protect us from doing the inevitable. We all like getting as close as possible to the edge, we never think we’re going to mess up, but if there’s no fence to hold us back, we often end up falling over.

The darker or stronger the colour of the paint – in this case dark red – the more the blemishes on the wall are noticeable, the more the streaks stand out and the more you have to be careful with every brush stroke to cover all the old paint and not leave any unwanted imperfections in the paintjob.

L
esson n#3 The greater someone is, the more we notice their tiny slip-ups, mistakes and shortcomings. The greater someone is, the more they have to be careful about every seemingly trivial action they take, as every fault will inevitably be detected in virtue of their greatness.

If you try to cut corners, get lazy and don’t cover the floor with newspaper or don’t clean up after yourself, you’ll end up spending way longer doing touch-ups and cleaning up the mess you left behind in your eagerness to get the job done quickly.

Lesson n#4 It’s pointless to try and rush through major self-transformation, if you skip baby steps you’ll end up spending twice as long doing damage control. Better to take your time and do things step by step, and clean up small messes and overcome small challenges as they present themselves, and avoid a major crash and lengthy corrections.

It took me two days of work to finish painting the whole room - it was exhausting - but I now have an amazingly beautiful funky red bedroom to chill in.

Lesson n#5
short term hard work leads to long term pleasure.

Trading Spaces and other home improvement television shows feed us lies, deception and straight out rubbish. They make it seem way simpler than it actually is.

Lesson n#6
Don’t believe what you see on TV!

I love my new red room!

Lesson n#7
it’s the simple pleasures in life, especially those you’ve worked
hard at achieving that make you happy!

22 Comments:

At Sunday, November 26, 2006 10:55:00 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Beautiful post.
Cute, entertaining, and most of all inspiring.

 
At Sunday, November 26, 2006 11:00:00 PM, Blogger smb said...

great lessons

 
At Sunday, November 26, 2006 11:55:00 PM, Blogger Sarah Likes Green said...

sounds great!

enjoy and thanks for the inspiring lessons :)

 
At Monday, November 27, 2006 12:41:00 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

You're totally the contemporary Reb Zeshe..

Although red is definetly not my favorite, I can't argue that it 'aint royal. Enjoy resting in rouge.

 
At Monday, November 27, 2006 2:11:00 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Profound lessons, but...

"It took me two days of work to finish painting the whole room - it was exhausting - but I now have an amazingly beautiful funky red bedroom to chill in.

Lesson n#5 short term hard work leads to long term pleasure."

Something tells me that you're going to start ruing the rouge pretty soon {you like that line, eh?}. It's cool at first, but you're gonna regret it sooner or later. Plan to spend many nights on the couch in the living room!!!

 
At Monday, November 27, 2006 5:05:00 AM, Blogger Alan aka Avrum ben Avrum said...

Dear Shifting,

An excellent blog! Wonderful! I'll be back often!

I am ...

Very Sincerely yours,

Alan D. Busch

 
At Monday, November 27, 2006 5:36:00 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

wow so many lessons from a paint job.
Well done,especially since I don't even know where to go to buy paint.
It looks great in any case, gla doyu enjoy the fruit of your labour:)

 
At Monday, November 27, 2006 9:23:00 AM, Blogger anonym00kie said...

Independant Frum Thinker,
Lvnsm27,
sarah..
glad you enjoyed :)

chavie..
who's Reb Zeshe?
the paint is a dark red, it looks really nice :)
with the proper lighting and decoration, it almost looks like a lounge.. you just want to play some funky music and smoke hooka :)

nemo..
good thing, i learned lesson n#1 :) that was another one of the worries poeple tried to discourage me with.. maybe youre right, maybe not.. i guess we'll eventually find out.. but i doubt it.\
anyway.. the truth is, i never end up staying in the same room/apt for more than a year or two.. so i can be daring and wild with my paint/decor :)

Alan aka Avrum ben Avrum..
thanks a lot.. and welcome

Pragmatician..
trust me, i had no clue either, but its easy to figure it all out and now i feel that much more capable!
one of the advantages of not being married, i get to learn all kinds of stuff other girls my age have a husband or a professional payed by a husband do :)

 
At Monday, November 27, 2006 10:00:00 AM, Blogger socialworker/frustrated mom said...

I love that pic so much. So great that you did that good for you, hope it was fun.

 
At Monday, November 27, 2006 11:14:00 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Bloody Hell!
oui, that about sums it up... the colour

 
At Monday, November 27, 2006 1:24:00 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Wait a minute, RED?
Oooh, I couldn't deal with that, too dark for me. I like the bright colors.
The post... its fantastic.

 
At Monday, November 27, 2006 5:21:00 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

yea!!!
this i like!!

i love ur attitude (how these lessons 'chanced' upon you) as well as ur daring.
you like red, you go red.
not only should u ignore everyone else-why, i think you should secretly jog over n paint THEIR bedrooms red as well.
oh and don't bother with the newspapers when it comes to them... ;)

 
At Monday, November 27, 2006 6:43:00 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

never paid much attention before-so it could be old-but ill say it anyhow-titchadshi on ur new blog header quote.
im lovin it.

hmmmmm

 
At Monday, November 27, 2006 7:40:00 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

hum.... I cant argue your points and I have the same reaction. People tell me do one thing and i run and do the opposite. BUT after all you said I would never paint my room red :)

 
At Tuesday, November 28, 2006 5:12:00 PM, Blogger Lee said...

Hey! That's such a good idea -I never would have thought of red...I'm planning a deep saphire blue for my next bedroom (I also move pretty often:). So mazel tov on your new room -it must feel so good to do something like that yourself.

Plus finding the ruchniyus in the gashmiyus proves once again almost nothing is bad (including the color scarlet!) intrinsically, it's all about what you do with it.

 
At Wednesday, November 29, 2006 8:38:00 AM, Blogger anonym00kie said...

socialworker/frustrated mom..
it really was fun, but its even more fun now to walk into my room and think.. omg.. i did this.. geez.. im brave :)
(i dont actually say geez to myself tho!)

limey..
you seem well acquainted with the decor of said place..

yingerman..
yuck bright colors! cmon.. its bad enough everyone keeps telling me my blog is so positive.. you want me to paint my room bright colors?! thats way too much brightness for a cynic like me :)

the sabra..
its SO much work to paint a room red..theres no one i dislike enough to spend that much time and energy on :) let them paint their own room..
or worse.. let them stay in a boring white room :)

anonysabra..
its amazing how many times ive repeated that line to myself .. its such a big yetser hara to think.. its hopeless, ive messed up beyond repair.. the minute you realize there is NO beyond repair, you watch that yetzer hara melt away like the wicked witch

chaverah..
its really romantic :) i think ud love it heh

Okee..
it really does! just to know that i wanted it, and went thru all the steps to get it, and it looks amazing..feels gooood :)

 
At Wednesday, November 29, 2006 1:32:00 PM, Blogger Scraps said...

We're not allowed to paint the walls in our apartment, since it's a rental. :(

I'm so glad you're enjoying your new red room so much! And you learned some great lessons; thanks for sharing them with us.

 
At Wednesday, November 29, 2006 3:34:00 PM, Blogger ;iulu said...

i never thought red'd work either..but my office has red walls (done tastefully..some are white too, with light wood floors to offset the rich red color)..resulting in a fresh experience every time the door opens. i kid you not, the first time a client walks in their eyebrows pop up a little and mouth starts to hang..it's pretty cool. and being it works..it may just kick light blue-sky-with-nick-&-noraesque-clouds off the top of my list of things to paint my ceiling with..couldja upload a pic of your room for us?

TIA ;)

 
At Wednesday, November 29, 2006 4:45:00 PM, Blogger beautiful-stranger said...

fantastic post!!
some great lessons learned!

 
At Thursday, November 30, 2006 9:00:00 AM, Blogger bellanny said...

love the post and the message.
enjoy your red bedroom.
you go girl!

 
At Friday, December 01, 2006 9:37:00 AM, Blogger LubaGal said...

Hey, good for you!!
Those are awesome life lessons!!

 
At Friday, December 01, 2006 1:52:00 PM, Blogger David_on_the_Lake said...

Cant wait to see a picture..
:-)
red is the color of life...blood...fire..vitality...

 

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