The main place where I will write my project is my bedroom. No surprise there. My room has recently undergone a couple of changes which I am very proud of.

The walls were once a dark grey color which is my favorite color. The curtains were black and blocked out the sun. I basically lived in a little dark cave. My bed always has grey sheets. The bed frame and tall dresser are made of a light colored wood. I have an ikea dresser in white and an ikea bookshelf that is probably as old as I am. A rusty orange colored cart holds all my makeup next to my ikea dresser. There’s a mirror with butterfly decals resting on top of a guitar amp. I don’t actually play the guitar but the amp prevents the mirror from falling and I also think it looks cute. My room is sort of awkward because I have two closets and the door to the rest of the house which leaves me only one corner to position my bed.

The house I live in is old and the men who were working on it before I moved in didn’t do an amazing job. They cut corners to save money, to be expected. So, my walls developed cracks despite only living in this house for a couple of years. I stared at these cracks and this one gaping hole for months, maybe even years since I can’t even remember when they appeared. I asked my dad to fix it, never happened. Then my mom came home with paint from her job. A cute light pink color but why paint my room when I have the ugliest looking walls?

I’m the type of person that randomly decides to do something. So one day I decided why wait on an unreliable man to do something for me when I have two working hands and a more than capable mind. I knew we had tools in the basement so that made my task a little easier. I watched maybe ten or so youtube videos on plastering, caulking, taping corners, tips and tricks for painting. I removed my curtain rods and filled the holes where they were previously screwed in. I cracked open my wall and scraped out as much dust and loose particles that I could with a screwdriver. For one corner I decided to fill it with caulking instead of plaster, that was easy enough. However, the large hole was much more difficult, the plaster wouldn’t stick. It ended up making a mess, there were little chunks of plaster on the floor which I stepped on and later had to scrape off. A couple hours later, I started sanding down the holes that I filled. I begun prepping for painting, removing furniture, taping down plastic tarp, wiping down the walls.

Now I have light pink walls, it only took three days of painting. (I say that with annoyance, I had to sleep with my mother for two of those nights.) Woohoo! I accomplished something and was so proud but forgot that I had removed my curtains to place them higher up. Back to youtube, “how to install curtain rods properly.” For some odd reason that worried me more than when I had further tore up my wall to plaster. I had to drill into my walls to install curtain rods, and I was supposed to make sure I drilled into a stud. That was too much work for me, I just decided “Hey let me just drill where I want these curtain rods and pray for the best.” One of them is lopsided now but considering I’m not a professional so I’m still happy with the end result. I changed the black curtains for sheer grey ones.

After that mini renovation, my room was clean for about a month before my old habit of being a slob kicked back into overdrive. I’m pretty sure my room doesn’t look that much different than it did a year ago. I still have the same furniture, same piles of books on the floor, an overpiling stack of clean clothes that I am too lazy to fold, a huge bag of laundry that needs to get done and makeup littered all across the top of my dressers.

All that is besides the point, I put a lot of effort into making my room somewhat better. I don’t have to look at a hole in the wall, I’m not living in a cave like a hibernating mole rat anymore. But writing this is making me realize I should probably clean my room.

My room is basically a representation of me. My head is also very disorganized, I pay attention to the wrong things, I change a lot mostly out of boredom. I know having more light come into my room makes me more productive. There’s many memories in this bedroom which will help me write my autoethnography.

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