you cannot find peace by avoiding life

What would your perfect room look like?

Way back when, a lot of years ago, I undertook a whole bunch of projects all at the same time. I set out to organize several thousand printed photographs into (really nice, acid-free, professional quality) albums, in order by date. I compiled recipes into books and boxes. Beyond my usual compulsion to catalog movies, music and books, I morphed into a "completionist": it was not enough to own some books in an author's canon; nothing would do but to have all of them, preferably in the same binding style from the same publisher. Same with films and music--it was all or nothing.

A couple of years before all this kicked in, I'd been involved in the purchase of a first home. It was in really good shape, had no major problems, and was really pretty cute. It required a little bit of work (carpet in one room, wallpaper in another) to bring it up to immediately "modern."

However, around the time that I started all those other projects, I decided that the en suite bathroom really needed an upgrade. It is an oddly-shaped room, almost triangular, and the multiple browns in there were pretty horrid.

It took probably half a year of research, buying, and transformation to get that room into what at the time was my ideal bathroom. The walls were a deep Greek island sea color called "blue fjord", the furnishings were mahogany, the ceiling and fixtures bone white. It was a lovely room, enormously peaceful and soothing. It was completed in August.

I moved out in September.

When I reread this question, early this morning, I realized that I've done roughly the same thing with this (current) house.

The master bedroom is dark. Three walls of gray with the fourth wall slightly darker yet. The pictures on the walls are personal to me, and all shades of black, blue or green. The long drapes are gray velvet. The bedding is white or gray. It is a sanctuary of murkiness, of solitude, of stillness. It's one of those rooms that seems particularly well-suited to sleep, and not much else--which is perfect, since that's all I use it for. No reading, no TV {shudder}, no talking on the phone. Just sleep.

And yet.

Now that the room is done, even though there remain plenty of unfinished projects in the house, I'm finding myself feeling ...disengaged. Is it because the "perfection" that I sought in this house has been achieved, and I'm therefore ready to move on? Or is it because other parts of my life are unsettled, and this fix-it-and-forget-it mentality that was launched with the bathroom in that first house has kicked in again? Either way, I'm feeling more like there really is no such thing as perfect, that anytime one starts feeling happy with anything it's time to look for the lumps, and maybe being satisfied with less is the best route to take.

[from a list originally found on Tumblr - this is #4; the title quotation is by Michael Cunningham, from The Hours]