My husband and I have lived in our house for four and a half years and I am finally painting our bedroom. I hate painting.
I hate painting trim the most. I hate priming the trim even more.
I was considering my dark feelings toward the process and I came to the realization that it’s the repetition with very delayed rewards that drives my discontent.
If any of you have ever painted wood trim knows, it is a process! And I skip half of what you are supposed to do.
What is sanding???
Anyway, it takes at least three steps to get to gorgeous white trim. Then you forget that you also have to paint the doors.
So here I am, on month two of painting one room. This should take a day, but it has taken me what will possibly be upwards of three months. It’s laborious and long and the fulfillment doesn’t come until that final application.
Kind of like anything that matters, right?
Chronic disease usually isn’t healed over night. It takes weeks, months, years of trying one medication and then another, maybe changing your diet, taking some vitamins, rethinking every flipping thing and it can seem endless, and rather unrewarding at times.
It’s true in relationships too. We can have one falling out, make one mistake, forget one thing and have to work at rebuilding trust for years.
Or maybe it’s that record you are trying to make, that book you want to write, that degree you’re trying to earn. Whatever it is, your reward requires persistence and tenacity. We can’t let ourselves give in when it seems the stupid room will never be finished.
We just have to keep painting, one brush stroke after another, until finally, it’s white, and perfect, and we can sit in the middle of the floor with a glass of wine, reaping the beautiful rewards of the hard work, as we ignore the one spot we missed in the corner.
That will be the perfect spot for the new armoire, don’t you think?
What is it that you have been persisting at? When have you wanted to give up? What have you overcome? Tell me in the comments.