The Natural Habitat

When I first started writing for a living, I made a lot of mistakes. One is the same one lots of rookies make. In fact, one of the telltale signs of a young writer is someone who starts an article, story, paper, etc. off by citing a definition. I’m sure you’ve seen it done. Heck, you may have even done it. It would go something like this.

Wikipedia (which, by the way, you should never use as a reference) defines “habitat” as “an ecological or environmental area that is inhabited by a particular species of animal, plant or other type of organism. It is the natural environment in which an organism lives, or the physical environment that surrounds (influences and is utilized by) a species population.”

That’s not to say you can’t use definitions in your work, you just don’t start off that way. It’s lazy. Uninspired. If that’s as exciting as your opening, which is really supposed to pull your reader in, gets, imagine how boring the rest of the thing will be.

I just thought I would share that little tidbit since it popped into my brain as I started to write this post. Which, by the way, has nothing to do with rules of writing, it has to do with observing animals in their natural habitat. Actually, it’s about the habitat of one particular animal.

Wanna guess which animal?

You’ll never guess, so I’ll just save you some time and pain and tell you.

That animal is me.

Yep, Hubby was in the spotlight yesterday. Now it’s my turn.

I have finally redecorated my office. There are still a few things left to do, like add more pictures to the walls, but the big stuff is finished.

Before, it was BLAND. Seriously. Everything was either white or off-white. It was quite depressing.

Not only was it lacking color, it was quite disorganized. I never completely unpacked stuff. There were boxes sitting around, and stacks of paper to be sorted. It actually looks rather neat in these before shots. Because I didn’t remember to capture before images until I had already started preparing to paint. It’s hard to paint with crap scattered all about the place.

Just trust me, it was bad. Completely uninspiring. I hated spending time in there. So, during my period of unemployment earlier this year, I decided to change things. I wanted to add COLOR. I wanted the room to be interesting.

Some people go for the chic office look. I was going for fun. I wanted COLOR.

And that’s what I got. When describing my paint scheme to a friend, she said, “That sounds like a child’s room.” It might even look like a child’s room. But that’s okay. I like it and that’s what matters, right? I mean, I spend an awful lot of time in here every day, I might as well like what surrounds me.

So, are you ready for the AFTER pictures?

It’s hard photographing an entire room, so you have to see it in pieces.

 

 

I have to pause here and explain that my office and Hubby’s office share an adjoining bathroom. It’s quite convenient, but sort of limits how far one moves during any given day.

 

 

 

And, yes, they use it all the time. Hubby says it looks like I said something like, “Okay, I have to put the dogs away now so I can go to work.” Because, really, they’re there pretty much all day long. We come into the room, I sit at my chair, they climb into their beds.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I would show you more frog pictures (yes, I found my frogs!), but I do realize that not many folks appreciate frogs like I do. Take Hubby as an example. He doesn’t get the frog thing. Recently, I ordered the switchplate cover, crazy frog lady sticker, and window sticker (you can see that in the picture above with the “More Color” caption). When they arrived, Hubby, who gets the mail every day, saw the return address on the package and said, “Really? The Frog Store?” As in, “I cannot buh-lieve you are now shopping at The FROG Store.” That sort of conversation happens in my habitat frequently.

That’s it for the tour. I hope you like my new office as much as I do. If you don’t, that’s okay. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, no matter how wrong or silly that opinion may be. 🙂

Now I have to get to work in my nice, new office.