An Eclectic Confession

What is your favourite meal? Colour? Type of music? Gold or silver? I have a very difficult time expressing favourites. There are just too many things that I love. How does one decide that Italian is their favourite kind of food? What about quesadillas? Chicken stir fry? A great curry? A juicy burger? A flaky spanakopita or a sweet Cuban flan (mmm... with fresh grated coconut)? I love them all! Don't make me pick a favourite.

When I was in high school, I wanted to be an interior designer/decorator. I read design and decor magazines voraciously. I even read books with house plan blue prints and would imagine how to decorate each one. Even in earlier years, I built little houses from Lego, complete with walls and furniture inside. The outside didn't matter as much as what I could do to decorate the inside of my Lego houses. I yearned for my very own doll house, which I never did get, but only so I could re-arrange the furniture to my heart's content. Even in more recent years I played Sims just so I could decorate my Sim house.

In my own house, the walls are rather bare. The style is hard to pin down. I have a bit of this, a bit of that. I attribute it to a combination of inadequate funding (I need a Sugar Daddy) and being paralized by indecision. I remember when I first heard the word "eclectic" and learned that it meant a mixture of styles, a little bit of everything. I immediately identified with eclectic as a way to describe my likes and interests. I am all over the map. I don't just like one particular style of house or decor. I like Victorian, modern, Scandinavian, southwest, country, mission/prairie/arts and crafts... I can't possibly choose just one style for my little split bungalow. If I have to choose one, then I lose out on all the others that I love too.

And so my house and my crafting have become an eclectic mix of my preferred styles, with no real defining point to tie it all together. My interests come and go, with some being more enduring than others. Paper crafting and card-making have been a passion for at least 8 years. My word for 2009 is "focus", which lends itself well to my eclectic nature. I will attempt to choose a path, to define a style, to "focus" on what I want to realize with my paper crafting. I hope you enjoy the trip. :)