Did I miss my calling?
When THIS LIFE gets too much for me, I always have interior design. My mother, to this day, says I missed my calling. She’s very proud of me and loves seeing me onstage, but she still thinks this. And maybe I did.
When I was growing up from a very young age, I was obsessed with interior design. I used to spend hours decorating my barbie house and then I’d stop playing. While all the other kids bought comic books, I would have my dad buy me a book of floor plans at the supermarket checkout and look at them and dream for hours, days even. I made the most elaborate lego mansions complete with canopy beds and toilets in the bathrooms. My favorite game to play with my brother before I’d go to bed at night was “design a hotel.” We’d pick a locale, a name, and we’d design all the rooms. My brother just played along because I was his big sister, but I LOVED it. I got really lost in the fantasy of it. I still remember THE DOLPHIN. It was a hotel I “designed” that sat on the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea complete with an underwater tubed escalator that brought you up to the beach. It brings back such happy memories to think about that.
I remember telling my mother that I wanted to be a dentist when I grew up. When she asked why, I told her it was so I could afford the kind of house that I wanted. That was the ONLY reason. My favorite movies were also design-inspired. I was OBSESSED with the tree house in SWISS FAMILY ROBINSON, and only liked to watch the parts of the movie where they’re IN the treehouse. Pirates, riding ostriches, and all that was nothing to me compared to that amazing structure. I LOVED the Californian villa in PARENT TRAP. That house was amazing. You get the idea, I was a child completely obsessed with design and it looked like that was where my life would lead me.
All of that changed on that fateful day when I turned 14 and my grandmother took me to see Les Miserables on Broadway. To quote another huge musical…”I saw the lights and I was on my way.” And since that day, with a few detours, theater has been my life. I don’t regret it necessarily, I just wonder sometimes if I went the right way. If in another dimension there is a high-powered architect or designer named Harmony? Maybe she even has kids and actually knows some straight men. BAH! But I digress. I guess in the end that this is how it should be. Design is my solace. It brings me pure joy. It isn’t my job. It can’t break my heart. It can’t disappoint me. It’s there to comfort me when I need it and it is a cause for happiness in my life. And really anything that makes us happy in life should be celebrated.
All photos are from Desire to Inpire which is a gorgeous blog. You should check it out.
