Prologue: sparks

“You’re doing this by yourself? But why? How do you know what you’re doing?”

…when you wake up one day to discover a large majority of the life you built from scratch doesn’t exist anymore, it changes a person. I’m a person that looked at the world in terms of sparks and events. A ‘spark’ by itself is magical and harmless, but a warning. In specific surroundings one spark can ignite.  And I mean that both literally and figuratively, but for this train of thought, mostly figuratively, I hope. If the spark ignites, what happens is what I call an ‘event.’ An event to me is a specific monumental occasion that presents itself after a series of smaller moments that leave you with a lingering question. Examples: is this job really worth all the stress, is this boyfriend really “the one,” should I cut my hair? etc.  You’ll notice it’s always a yes or no question, and it’s intentional.  These questions remain unanswered in your mind until the event. Enter event; and lingering question answered, almost always.  If it doesn’t answer the question, it isn’t the event.  It’s usually definitive without hesitation, but if you’re like me the most indecisive person ever questioning every everything ever, there is a contingency reassurance question.  And the question is always the same. Enough?

At least this is the way it always worked for me. Worked, because like me, the person who was changed, how I perceived everything also changed in the “after.” But I think that’s okay…

Let’s rewind and start from the beginning…

“Before”

A backstory might help so you have a little perspective to follow. Here’s the bullet starting seven years ago: 2009- finish college as a genetic’s major, internship at one of the world’s top cancer hospitals; 2010-job at same world-renowned hospital doing cutting-edge research and development; 2011-2013- grad school for management “to understand the bigger picture,” get published a couple times; 2014- leave big city world-renowned hospital five years later to manage a startup lab back home for awesome dollars aka “gig as the boss”, and do pretty well at that for a while.

I bought my condo in October 2014.  It was a big deal for me, one of biggest decisions I’d ever made.  The second those papers were signed I immediately changed the things I knew would prevent me from being comfortable in my very first new home.  It wasn’t anything major. I had floor-to-ceiling mirrors removed from my living room. “Good-bye 1980s.” I painted the whole first floor all the very same blah neutral color. “Because it goes with everything.” I changed all the brass door knobs to brushed nickel.  “Obviously.”  And then my mother showed up and minimally decorated one day. So I moved in and went about my life of doing science and being the boss and not really worrying about all the other things I wanted to change.  As a workaholic I didn’t spend an enormous amount of time enjoying my new found space.  I use that word ‘space’ specifically because I went from a tiny shoebox studio apartment in NYC, then home to the parent’s house for a few months, now to my new place housing all these rooms I didn’t even know what to do with.  Most days I came home to little Oliver, and my canine bff and I probably had a bite to eat sitting at the peninsula bar attached to my kitchen.  After that we would just binge watch the latest Netflix craze upstairs in bed and fall asleep.  Repeat every day.

Sure, I was happy I was in my own place, it seemed the logical step for where I was in life, but it didn’t feel like mine.  The things I asked myself whether or not I should change still lingered in the back of mind, but there was just no time, and they seemed too daunting to tackle. Looking back I think that’s why I didn’t invite my friends over, do any entertaining ever, or post relentless #newhomeowner pictures. I wasn’t ready yet, my home wasn’t ready yet.  So without any events to answer whether I should make the changes, I wasn’t ready to invite my people over to a place I was already uncomfortable in.  I’d like to think subconsciously I was saving those moments for the “after.”

Before the “after”…

2015-That workaholic career in science I had built from scratch started to throw sparks a year into the new gig as the boss. “Things” at work started to go down a very scary road in what I can only describe as being in the middle of the arctic wilderness at night without a flashlight or anyone around.  If you knew my friends, they would probably tell you that over the course of six months I slowly started losing my mind.

So I found a little distraction from freezing in the wilderness and got myself new boyfriend. It was great, he was great, everything (except work) was great, I had no complaints through spring and into summer.

I appeared on the news for kicking off “the first of its kind” scientific study for work.  It seemed like the ducks were in a row just swimming right along.

And then all at once, too many sparks. The boyfriend decides I’m not “wife material,” there is an event to revival all prior events at work forcing me to resign, I have a nervous breakdown, and what seemed like my entire world, everything I thought I knew about my life, was consumed by an inferno.  Too much smoke to breathe or see through, so I just left.  I packed everything I owned into garbage bags and fled to Cape Cod, the one place I knew would bring back some sunshine.

After…

Six weeks later, I came back home, back to my condo.  The one that didn’t feel like mine. That hadn’t changed. Having no job and not really in any mental capacity to start looking for another one in the wake of not being okay with what happened, really not being okay in general, all those things I wondered about whether I should change bothered me, they kept me awake at night. This condo was all that was left that was still mine, and I realized I had some time to fill,some money saved for a rainy day, and sparks were flying.  But these sparks were different, they came not from a place of self-doubt and wondering, but from a very loud and decisive, “let’s do this” new land entirely.

And so began the spiraling of events of what has turned into the best experience of my entire life, something I like to call, “Reconstruction: Talia Does DIY.”  People thought I was crazy. People didn’t understand.  It seemed perfectly logical to me.  My world collapsed, and out of the rubble I intended to rebuild the entire thing from scratch, by myself, exactly the way I wanted it, starting with my outdated condo.