Painter's Block

When we bought our first house, we were coming from living in those bastions of  builder's beige walls - apartments and military housing. I could hardly wait to put color onto my new walls. I had  the paint picked out before we even moved in. I painted our dining room midnight blue, the living room forest green, and our bedroom burgundy. Trust me, in the early nineties this was the palette.

We moved to our second house in 1999, and I took a break from all that partying to paint my foyer eggplant and my dining room chili pepper. The family room was spring green and the sunroom had yellow walls and a blue ceiling. There was not a wall in that house that I did not make colorful. I was very sad to paint everything the same color when we put it up for sale.

We closed on our new house last Monday. One of things I so looked forward to about moving out of the rental was getting away from the taupe that covers every single wall. The New House has off white walls which is a nice, blank canvas to work with.

Here is the surprising thing - I just cannot get started. I have taken a tree's worth of paint samples from Lowe's and Home Depot. They are taped all over the house, but I have not been able to make a decision. I have owned this house for a week now and have not bought a single gallon of paint.

I clearly have painter's block. As a writer, I know how hard writer's block is to overcome. The only real cure for it is to write which does not really make sense, but it does work. I just sit down and start typing out anything that comes to mind. I often have to resort to writing blah, blah, blah when I am really stuck. Then I come back to that part later and replace the blahs with real words.

I think this what I am going to have to do in the new house. I want to paint my sewing room first because I am very anxious to get it set up, but since I cannot choose between the multitude of color samples taped on the wall, I am going to pick out a nice creamy white and just paint. If you know me, you know how bizarre this is. I have never willingly painted a wall white in my life, but I am pretty sure it is the only way to get my color flow back. The white will be my painter's version of blah, blah, blah. Hopefully I will be able to come back later with a real color.