Can't It Just Be a Simple Paint Job?

Right now I'm asking myself why I decided to paint this cabinet. It probably would have been better to have put it on eBay and bought something new. What was I thinking? Why all that work to remake something?

That's a great question.

If I let myself keep going down that thought path, I'd have a lot of "what was I thinking" questions for myself. "Why publish a poetry book?" "Why take on 100 days of daily writing again?" "Why work on a collection of short stories?" 

Why don't I just get an easy job and craft an easy life? Pick up a few easy hobbies and go to the beach?

Is there really such a thing as an easy life?

I don't think there is. I think it just might be a fantasy to help get us through times like this.

The cabinet sits open on a plastic drop cloth in my bedroom. It looks terrible. Different parts painted with the first or second coat of white. The old color is bleeding through. This piece of furniture has so many interior corners I wonder if I will ever be able to get it to look good. I begin to wonder if I should have left the interior shelves behind the glass-paned doors the original color and just painted the outside. I look at it and just know it's going to take more than parts of the three days I thought it might. It might even take weeks. 

Weeks is a long time to paint a piece of furniture.

My personality is to keep things light and simple. I can do complex, but I don't like it. 

Could painting this cabinet be some kind of quest?

I'd prefer it to be just a paint job, but I know that things like this can also be metaphors for bigger things in my life. 

The Great Summer Writing Retreat of 2019 continues. One hundred days of writing unedited ideas and following a prompt to its sometimes illogical conclusion.