I am not sure if the modern consumer in me keeps resurfacing, but I am, of late, been feeling the urge to really replace more and more of my daily life with working vintage items. As you may or may not know, we finally recently have gone down to one car. It has not been any inconvenience as of yet, but I have been thinking at some point in the future, how lovely it would be to have a vintage car. Am I merely wishing to replace my reality or to hide from what I don’t like about the modern world in one of make believe? Or, can one really alter their own reality enough so that, though safely and with all rationale live in their own present time (medicine for example and computers) yet truly continue to live out in another? Who can say?
I guess I have come so far into what was once a project, that I find I am not sure anymore. I had also mentioned in my last post that this year has seemed more turbulent than last and a follower asked for me to elaborate on that. Since then I have been trying to find ways to put it into the tangible; to find a way to express it. It is a double edged sword, really. I am happy to have made my website and my forum and to continue on here. But, now with my growing projects outdoors and the garden and my return, though tentatively, to writing some fiction and painting for myself, I wonder if I am spread too thin.
Last year I was able to focus on each day in 1955: Read the news of the time, catch an occasional show from the time, and of course continually focus on my cooking and cleaning skills. There was a simplicity and innocence to my days that seem to have gone in a sense. I don’t mean to say I am not enjoying myself but in some ways feel the balance between all that I have added has me often feeling guilty about this or that thing. If I have not updated the blog or not attended to the Forum. Yet, part of my busy building project is to allow myself not only a home for my growing chickens, but an expansion on our barn that is to be my ‘creative central’ where I can paint but also write here as well as other things. To have a meeting place for my hopeful one day ‘Vintage Club’ or Local chapter of The Apron Revolution. So, there is a method to my madness, but now smack dab in the middle of the year, in the middle of Summer I wonder if I have allowed an innocent little project to steamroll me into an odd position.
Thus, the recent feeling of even trying to alter my physical world through more vintage items. On some level, I feel that is really just the old “modern me” who finds herself daily so busy and always doing that the old ease of the modern world can sometimes seem such a draw. “What to change your feelings, feel better or become a new you? Easy, go shopping. Just buy up whatever you want to be and feel and ‘ta-dah’”. So, not really certain.
But, overall, I am still very happy and content. I do feel rather bad as if my posts are so few and not very entertaining nor informative of late. And, I really do wish for that to remain such an important part of my life, so I suppose if I know some of you will hold on while I am ‘under construction’ as it were and not think I have abandoned my project or lifestyle. I know I have not shared sewing lately (although it has been happening) nor my garden nor food etc. Some mornings I will set the breakfast table and think, “The Gals would love to see this” but then forget to photograph it. I made some lovely blueberry filled crepes the other morning with fresh strawberries and cream that looked a treat, but nary a photo to share.
Then I wonder if the more I do honestly slip into my little vintage world I feel less and less the automatic need to document every action in it. That is a very modern aspect of our lives today, documentation. With the ease of digital cameras, computers, video etc, we find endless aspects of our everyday lives being documented. I have even noticed on YouTube that people will make a video of themselves opening a new product and their reaction to getting it out of the box. Does that not seem rather overkill?
Once people shuddered at the appearance of the slide projector and wheels upon wheels of vacation or baby slides, now we are so used to seeing and taking images and video, it is just a part of our life. I wonder if I had to use an actual 1956 camera to document my life, how much of it I would actually photograph.
So, here I am in the middle of 1956 wondering which of my actions are modern and which is me simply becoming so settled into my new ‘old’ life, not sure which is the best way to turn. I do know I shall forge ahead with all my usual. Having a schedule and such has made my life so much more Open to do MORE that I could not do half of what I do now and still have a clean house, folded laundry, dinners on the table and sewn dresses and also garden, build, write and paint. I just need to find the happy medium that doesn’t leave all of you out of it. And, as winter approaches and the days our shorter and I am, again, inside more, I am sure you will be sick of the hearing my days. Perhaps I shall write 10 page treatise on how I scrubbed my kitchen floor or the best sauce for chicken croquettes ( I do make a mean croquette, if I do say so myself).
So, bear with me and I hope you are all so busy that you don’t notice my absence. Or, better yet, join the Forum and I can catch up with you there.
So, have a great day and Happy Homemaking. If you are in the mood for a fun summer vintage film, I just added Mr. Peabody and the Mermaid from 1948 with William Powell and Ann Blyth on the main page of the site under Movie of the Week. It is a fun way to approach the male mid-life crisis. Enjoy!
