Depression isn’t something you just suddenly snap out of; for me it’s been more of a gradual awakening. For every week that goes by my head feels a little bit clearer, my soul a little bit lighter, and I am starting to feel like I really want to participate in the world again. I feel like I wasted age 18-25 and now I just want to make up for everything that I missed.

After years of not caring about much of anything at all, I’m trying to put the pieces of my life back together.

One of the big things for me is to make our little townhouse feel more like a home, so we’ve spent a lot of time over the last couple of weeks decluttering and organizing stuff. Now that I feel less cluttered as a person, I want our house to reflect that as well. Oh, and it would also be nice to be able to have people over without having to spend an hour cleaning first. Yeah…

Now that we have some progress in our living room, I decided to take some photos. The fact that I now keep the blinds on our windows completely open feels oddly significant (please stop me if I sound like a self-help book); I used to keep them shut all the time and just hide in my dark little cave.

I just got the new IKEA catalog in the mail and I think a shopping trip is in order (have I mentioned how much I hate shopping). I want to put a little bookshelf in the corner between the fireplace and the stairs to help contain the ever-growing mess that is my library – I’ve been good and very strict and am selling/donating all the books except my all-time favorites and the ones I know I am going to read again, but we still don’t have enough shelf space.

If we can fit it in our ridiculously narrow living room, I also want a comfy chair that would complete a circle around our coffee table. Now it just feels so tv-centric.

It feels so nice and light and airy in here now, I love it! My next project will have to be to make the bedroom feel the same way so we can wake up and feel good about ourselves every morning. Unfortunately this means going through the imposing mountain of ill-fitting clothes that is taking up all the space in my closet and sorting them for trash and donation. Bah!