Taking the time to be inspired and set resolve.

I’ve spent three months writing, re-writing, re-re-writing, going backwards as I chip away editing various blog drafts. Thinning my once animated thoughts. 

Last weekend, I went back to some of my favourite magazines for writing inspiration as my blog draft list is looking increasingly stale and I got absorbed by three pages on ‘home blindness’. A piece by John Clifford in Volume 21 of Kinfolk. 

Adapting to environments without questioning fault. We stop seeing problems to the extent that finding a solution slowly makes its way to the bottom of a to-do list, until it drops off into passive acceptance.

Home blindness, or Hemmablind the original Swedish word, is linked to the ever-so-popular Hygge, but with negative connotations. It’s an idea of blissful ignorance, mainly in the home but also in relationships, academia and the workplace.

The danger of becoming homeblind is that you don’t perceive the flaws or destructive patterns that you have.

M. Vacher,  associate professor of ethnology at the SAXO Institute in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Our home spaces are filled with faults we once noticed and fixated upon and then become invisible to us. Through habit, we tune out to the everyday surroundings that are on the path of our mundane bed-to-shower-to-kitchen movements. 

Vacher explains that “a good home is a place where there aren’t challenges, or where there’s not even a reason to discuss them…. the strength of routines and habits helps us to order the world and regard it as reliable… and when you regard the world as reliable, you don’t have to be as alert.”

There’s a six-month milestone at my first job, looming. I’ve noticed the effects of ‘home blindness’ on my career progress.  The words “passive acceptance” have my eyes wide and fearful. I’m on the periphery of an amazing advertising agency and in almost six months I’ve not once seen behind those closed meeting room doors. I’m scared that I’ve entered the ‘hemmablind’ trap of passivity.

Shielded from scrutiny by some sort of force field or invisibility mirror

Three years at university is pretty unpredictable. Moving accommodation each year, circling between numerous friends and social circles each day; new academic teachers and courses every few months. Now that I’ve been in full-time employment, with a fast-paced admin job demanding my full attention, I can start to identify my own dimming imagination and fading problem-identifying anxiety. I take this anxiousness as a good thing because it makes me productive and creative. Two qualities I really value in myself. Yet with a daily commute, routine admin chores, and one work desk, it’s been hard to keep this up. My imagination, my spontaneity and writing to-do list have slipped from my priorities. 

My resolve?

Keep reading.
Keep writing. 
Regain my curiosity.

Images taken from Kinfolk’s Instagram and quotes from John Clifford’s article ‘Home Blindness’ in Volume 21 of Kinfolk.