Making my mark

Estimated reading time: 4 minutes

It’s a rainy March day in Laguna Beach where we are spending the winter, and therefore a perfect day to ruminate about what’s next.

We accumulate, build upon, and hone our skill sets as we go through life, hopefully to greater satisfaction with our accomplishments. After retiring, some people are able or prefer to continue to use these skills via part-time work, contract work, or mentoring. Others veer as far away from their working personas as possible, choosing to take up hobbies or passions they had put on hold for the years they were in the working world.

My working world was in hospitality: welcoming guests, creating memorable meals and curating a positive experience. A lot of this remains with me as I try to figure out who I am, and who I will be, in my next chapter.

The aspects of my previous careers (advertising, marketing, writing, innkeeping) that I most enjoyed all center around creativity, so as a rough draft attempt at self-definition, I’ll say I am now the creative director of my life. And with a lifelong love of home design and décor, I’m currently focusing my creative direction on the nesting of our home.

One thing I realized was that twenty years of creating a warm, comforting space that isn’t wholly my own has made me become very territorial about our new house. The areas I shared with guests of the B&B – the downstairs living and dining room, the guest bathroom, and the mudroom – all reflected our personality and taste, and I was happy in them. The guest rooms, by definition, weren’t mine, though in our early years, I had named and themed their decoration for the estates Chris ran when he was a butler, which was tremendous fun for me. This included things like a framed picture of Chris in situ, artwork and a small collection of books in each room related to the area portrayed, and something “butler-y”—for example, Oak Knoll, named for the estate on the Gold Coast of Long Island is also the name of an Oregon-based wine producer, and so in that room I dressed a bottle in one of those wine tuxedos and rooted a philodendron in it. Eton Court, my English-themed room, featured a series of photos of London pubs, a small bookshelf containing a complete hardcover set of Agatha Christie mysteries, and a pub towel as a dresser scarf.

While I loved these touches, about seven years into our tenure I caved to industry pressure at an innkeeper’s conference that stressed that even those of us who ran smaller professional bed and breakfasts needed to be reminded that our guests did not want to feel like they were invading our HOME. Recognizing the truth here, I sighed and removed the personal photographs, books, and tchotchkes. Over the years, the guest rooms became less and less themed, though I refused to change the artwork. They had clean lines and neutral colors, and the guests seemed to like them. Truthfully, I lost much of my interest in them.

I won’t do that again.

I’ve said for most of my life that Laguna Beach, with its artsy history and vibe, is my spiritual home, and in truth, for years I believed we’d retire here. The homes are fairly small, close-set, and vary wildly in architecture – not a single tract home–and every neighborhood has a mix of single-family homes and apartment buildings. Art abounds in public spaces everywhere, from bus benches to murals to sculptures tucked into corners of the parks. Three huge art fairs dominate the summer scene. LCAD, the Laguna College of Art and Design, is increasing its presence each year. And the town is set on a gorgeous stretch of the Pacific Ocean.

But for so many reasons, our little (?) house on the pond is a much better fit for us both. And one of the things I love about it visually was that it was unlike any other house I’d seen; what my friend Alison, with degrees in historic architecture, described as “vernacular farmhouse.” In short, it is a one-off, Laguna-esque house that predates Laguna’s founding by over a quarter of a century. (Did I mention I like old houses?) One that I could make my mark ALL over.

Back to art, one of the things I most love to do while wintering in Laguna is to take fused glass classes from my mentor Maggie Spencer. The fruits of my efforts over the many years I’ve been doing this are scattered all over our Connecticut house, though mostly displayed on shelves in the dining room. One of the projects I tackled this year was designing vanity backsplash tiles for our downstairs bathroom. It’ll likely be a while before I can install them as we plan to remodel the bath first, but I’m excited the tiles will make it unique; nothing anyone else has.

That seems to be the theme running through my head: What can I do to make our place uniquely ours? What can I do to make this project uniquely mine? What kind of story is uniquely mine to tell?

What can I do to make my LIFE uniquely mine?

When will I recognize that it already is?