It would be obvious to anyone reading very many of my posts that I spend a lot of time making things. And if not making things, then tinkering with things, adjusting and altering them to suit my own ideas.
(putting longwinded complaints under a cut)
It would maybe be somewhat less obvious that I'm almost always extremely unhappy about the things I've made. They so often feel like wasted time and wasted materials and disappointment and failure. Many of them I hate with irrational bitterness, as they accumulate in storage and gather dust. I don't know what to do with any of them. (This morning I came across someone's post talking about how much they love being able to say "I made the thing I'm wearing!" and it was so upsetting and triggering I had to walk away from the computer for a couple of hours to try and recover.)
This is mostly because the feedback I get is so often discouraging. There have been a handful of people on the internet, over the years, who seem to like some of the stuff I've done, but in person I get a lot of variations on
Why would you do that?
Can't you just buy one of those?
What's that good for?
Well, that's different.
It's very, uh…individual. Unique.
I don't think I know what to say to that.
I guess, as long as you like it, that's what really matters.
These are all spoken in tones that range from polite incomprehension to irritated boredom to not-really-concealed disgust.
I had not, until fairly recently, thought about what might happen if I made something as large and ambitious as a house.
I haven't personally made the thing, of course. I contributed a few bits and pieces, but the vast majority of the work has been done by other people. But the initial idea was mine, and many of the decisions about the project were ultimately made by me. And I don't have to worry about where to store it when it's done, or what to do with it: it's a place to store things, it stays where it is, and the thing to do is put myself and my immediate household and our stuff there and live in it.
But it's giving me that same sad sinking feeling of failure that all my projects do. Failure to connect, I think. Failure to reach an audience outside myself. There isn't anybody who quite gets it, and I'm in the uncomfortable position of having to be endlessly on the defensive, trying to justify myself to people who think I'm an idiot with no judgement and no taste.
Why would you build a house? Just buy one.
Why there? That's a terrible neighborhood!
Nobody does it THAT way.
Well, you can do whatever you want.
It's very, uh…individual. Unique.
I guess, as long as you like it, that's what really matters.
A major problem is that I don't like it, much. There are of course many things about it that I do like. I'm not constantly tripping over some previous owner's hideous aesthetic choices. There's no lead paint or knob-and-tube wiring. But there are so many things I wish I could have done differently, if only my budget had been orders of magnitude larger. The place is kind of tiny and cramped, and there's not really enough storage space (I'm still working on getting more shelving into the closets and basement) and I'm struggling to deal with all the oversized ancient heavy furniture my family has dumped on me.
But the biggest difficulty is that it's in a city I hate, with a climate I hate, and there's nothing I can do about that. If I wanted to pick up and move to somewhere I like better, I'd have to cut off the last of my remaining family connections, and I'm not willing or functionally able to do that. I have enough chronic mental and physical issues that I don't think I'd be able to survive on my own, even if there were no difficulties about things like finance. (There are very much difficulties about things like finance.)
So I'm wasting lots of energy and brain cells beating myself up for being such a rotten spoiled-princess jerk, who got to build a house and is now full of complaints about it. I'm utterly disgusted with myself for feeling this way, but I still feel this way, and I can't figure out how to get myself un-stuck.
