I spent this afternoon and evening helping a friend put their living room back in order. They recently had it painted. And whereas most of the work was already done, I helped hang a few photos and installed those rolly switch thingies on a couple lamp cords. The rolly switch thingies were the hardest part. In theory it’s a simple operation, but as you know, dear reader, theory and reality are two different things. At least tonight they were. It took over an hour–and not a few curse words–to get the switches installed.

Recently my friend Kim told me that if someone asks you to help them and you think it’s going to take three hours, assume that it will take six, then decide if you want to help or not. Well, the point is the same for redecorating your living room or any sort of repair project–it always takes longer than you think it will. Thankfully, my friend and I had a great time visiting while things were slowly getting done. We chatted and laughed; we ate dinner. When the food arrived (we ordered in), my friend said, “Okay, everything stops.” And it did–we put aside every half-done project and sat down at the dinner table.

The point–few things in life can’t wait until after you eat.

After dinner we finished up in the living room, then I helped my friend with a couple computer problems. Then we returned to the living room because something was bothering us. I’ll explain. When I moved one of the rolly switch thingies from low on a particular lamp cord to up higher, I had to splice the wire where the rolly switch thingy had been before and wrap it with electrical tape. Since the cord was hanging off the back of a pedestal table, you could see the repair, tape and all. Ick, gross. Anyway, we ended up moving lamps around, switching out the one on the pedestal table with another that sat on top of a wine rack. This ended up being the perfect thing, since the wine rack had a back that hid the unsightly cord.

Well, this started something, so we switched out two other lamps–one in the computer room for one in the living room. However, I personally found myself in a quandary–I liked the new lamp in the living room but thought it made the room look too white, too bright, too stark. At first I thought this was because of the shade. The old one had a red shade, and the new one had a white linen one. But then I thought to simply change the bulbs, since the too bright lamp had an LED bulb, and the other one had an incandescent. Voila! This did the trick. The previously too bright lamp immediately took on a warmer, softer tone, and the white linen shade now appeared more tan, khaki.

Again, this started something, so we began changing out all the light bulbs in the living room lamps (there were a lot of them). One by one, we pulled out LED bulbs and put in incandescent ones. And just like that, the entire living room became warmer, calmer, friendlier. It was like the room itself heaved a collective sigh and relaxed its shoulders.

Energy efficiency be damned!

After we finished this project, my friend pulled out an old photo of me. It’s at the top of tonight’s blog, and I think it was taken when I was about twenty-five, when I opened my dance studio. I know for sure it was taken at the studio; I’d recognize that wall anywhere. Anyway, I love that photo. Not because I think I looked THAT much different when I was twenty-five, per say, but because the photo was taken by a large glass window and I had good lighting (fabulous really), like my friend’s living room has now. Yes, good lighting makes all the difference. So many times we cast our problems in this stark, bright light. Ick, gross. We think, I can’t do anything about this. But even if that’s true, even if our problems refuse to budge, it is possible to shift our perspective. Like changing a light bulb, we can change the way we look at things. We can take what once seemed unbearable and turn it into something warmer, something softer, something we can work with.