There is a guest suite that I've called "the cottage" which is adjacent to the house. It has housed guests and now it has transformed into my studio. During the Memorial Day weekend I moved in all my art projects, tools and equipment and have been working to make it mine. I can go there whenever I wish and sit and paint, or draw or wait for inspiration to strike. I can also leave an unfinished project without worrying about the mess. Just walk away and return later.
I've always had a need for a room of my own. We tend to call that extra room in our homes "the office" and leave it at that. I've always had a space in every home I've lived in that housed "my stuff" whatever that meant at the time. It wasn't officially "mine" though. It wasn't intended for me. Funny, I remember moving into a new place wherever we were in the world and assigning rooms for everyone and like most women, calling that extra room "the office." Some men like the garage as a project room and others need office space at home. My husband never felt a need for an office at home. He never brought work home and had no interest in a space designated for that purpose. He used to say that he did his best work lying on his back looking at the stars! I on the other hand, did work at home and my office was really wherever I had the space. Sometimes the basement, a room left behind by one of my kids going to college, a lonely abandoned spot in the basement, a spot wherever I could find it in the house. And it was a cavernous house. And it really didn't have a real room for me.
It took me a long time to allow myself the full privilege of calling a specific part of the house mine and only mine. Not my bedroom, or office. No. My space. And now, so many years later I finally have.
A place to play, to think, to create, and while many will say that my whole house can be my sanctuary, a room of my own, and in my case, separated but adjacent to the house where I actually live, is a gift I have given myself. Because that's what it is. Allowing it to happen. I've had that cottage for almost five years now and its been empty expect for the times that I've had visitors and they could enjoy the comfort and independence that it provided them for a few days. When they left, it would remain empty. No more. Now my guests will be housed in the spare bedroom in my house. The "cottage" is now mine.
I immediately called my daughters and recommended that wherever they are, they make a room their own and call it by that name, "my room." And they have to make it theirs.
I guess I've finally grown up and taken possession of a small place in this world that is completely and utterly mine. Visitors to my studio? By invitation only!
The first thing you see in my new workshop is this sign:
