When Good Ideas Don't Get Made

I’ve been working on a project for the past few days. I spent six or seven hours on it Tuesday. And hours yesterday troubleshooting. 

I endured a seriously bad mood.

I sat in the paint aisle at Walmart for thirty minutes late last night, answering questions from customers about brushes and stencils. Apparently sitting on the ground surrounded by tiny paint containers lends a sister some art stuff authority.

After the Walmart run I felt better.

This morning I awoke with new sketches and a new lease on life, ready to fix all my mistakes, armed with new tools and new plan.

But then, in a long logistics discussion with a person in the know, I realized what I’d been planning just wasn’t going to work—not in the time available, not without my own personal carpenter like the ones you get as a designer on Trading Spaces. 

(Oh how I wish I had a personal carpenter!)

So now my big project, for which I have weeped and rejoiced, is—don’t say it!—cancelled.

And I am weepy. 

Because I conceived it and carried it around and bore with its constantly kicking me in the ribs, and now I will have to say goodbye before I’ve even had the chance to birth it. 

I am so melodramatic.

Still, that’s how it feels when a project really wants to be made but doesn’t get made. It’s terrible, rotten, exhausting and sad. Right on the heels of its having been exciting and promising and hope-y.

Yuck. 

JL Gerhardt