The Joy of Knowing What You Like
Finding yourself again in your personal aesthetic
I have been slow at putting away Christmas this year. Though I removed the outdoor lights before the turn of the calendar page to the new year (because it was fifty degrees and I wasn’t waiting until it dropped to twenty), as of this writing I still have my Christmas tree up and lit. But today I did restore my bookshelf in the living room to an almost Christmasless state (there are still two golden deer on the top and an evergreen garland and some golden pears, but I’m looking at those as more wintery decor than specifically holiday themed).
Though I took a picture of the shelf before I decorated for Christmas, I opted to make a few changes rather than restore it to exactly the way it looked in November. Here it is now:
In a lot of ways, making decorating tweaks is just like revising a text, except you’re working with objects instead of words. You remove those things, add these things, and move the other things around until you have a more pleasing arrangement—or perhaps not more pleasing but differently pleasing.
To me, this shelf more accurately embodies my personal aesthetic than almost anything else. While I may wear a lot of gray and black and blue, I like my surroundings to be warm and muted. You’ll see some faded rust and tarnished brass and soft coral here and there, but few other shades of orange or yellow make it into my house. These orange-adjacent shades are there because they are the complement to the blues and blue-greens I adore.
You’ll never see purple in my house except in flowers cut from the garden.
My personal aesthetic is warm and natural, eclectic yet ordered. Colors found in nature. Actual nature in the form of pinecones, birds’ nests, and stones (though there are no stones on this shelf at the moment). I love natural fibers and natural dyes, candlelight and coziness. I love pottery, antique books, watercolor paintings of landscapes and fading light. Wood and leather, fur and feathers, stone and paper.
I have always known what I like and I’m puzzled by people who hire decorators because they don’t really know what to do with their own rooms. But I suppose being aesthetically minded is a proclivity that not everyone has, just as I have no affection for spreadsheets or algorithms or sports statistics. I far prefer to spend my time bringing together and balancing various colors and forms into a sensible whole rather than doing the same with numbers. Both ways of being are good and necessary, and I am glad I am content with exercising the softer skills of the humanities and the arts.
Why am I going on about this? I don’t have a precise purpose in mind. But I knew I wanted to share how much I love this bookshelf with you. And I have had in the back of my mind for a while now the vague sense that I wanted this space on Substack to morph from what it has been as an author’s email newsletter to the way I used to write on my blogs (Stuff No One Would Publish and The Consummate Amateur on Blogspot, and my later Wordpress blog) back before I was publishing books.
Those of you who have been with me since way back then know that I used to write with more frequency and less of an agenda. And now that I am writing my next novels at my own pace and I don’t have a new book coming out for the first time in six years, I’m looking forward to using this space as a place for you to get to know me better as the person I actually am—the person I have been—who was not constantly feeling the pressure to grow a mailing list and promote her novels. Back before everyone moved to Facebook and Twitter and stopped reading and commenting on blogs.
Back when I knew my own desires as well as I knew my own aesthetic.
It is snowing and blowing outside my second story home office window right now. Downstairs my Christmas tree still glows warmly and my bookshelf is just how I want it. My son is leaving soon for a sleepover (just a few days after he had four friends sleep over on New Year’s Eve). The house is darkening as the light fades into evening behind the thick blanket of gray clouds. For a little while, I’ll be alone. Then my husband will come home with something to make for dinner and we’ll spend a quiet evening in.
After the constant stream of people and holiday events that have dominated life over the past weeks, I treasure the quiet cold of January. Yesterday I turned forty-five. The last age I remember feeling was forty. Not sure what happened the past five years. But I guess a whole lot. A lengthy pandemic. Six books published. Two fathers lost. A household moved. Renovations and landscaping projects. A son who started driving and who is now dating a serious girlfriend.
There has been fragmentation, distraction, discord, and loss. But there has also been beauty and forgiveness and good work and holding one another up.
I don’t know what the next five years hold. I do have some lovely plans for this year that, Lord willing, will come to pass and will be the basis of some beautiful memories to look back on in the future.
And somewhere in the calendar pages of 2025, I hope to find my way back to a sense that there is a place in my life for all that matters because I have edited out those things which do not satisfy. I hope to feel like my favorite bookshelf—warm and natural, eclectic yet ordered, full of lovely forms and complementary colors.
Balanced and beautiful.
Love that you have done this email thing. I enjoy your writing. Back when you said you were doing this, I thought that your emails would get lost in the overwhelming tunnel of emails, but they haven't. You talked of being deliberate. That is something I have also taken up over the last few years. Lost my father three years ago in December and my younger brother, a year and a half ago. Both losses still ripe but those losses have created a natural cleaning and helped make deliberate and intentional choices and eliminate the things that hinder growth. Your bookcase is so peaceful. Thanks for always sharing and being raw. I think many of your readers can relate to you. Happy New Year and I wish you a great 2025.
Lovely reflections and musings, as most people don't bother spending the time to assess their surroundings and how life has been and might be affecting them. One of the many reasons why I enjoy your writing, both with posts and on paper. Six months later, does this response stimulate other memories?