My writer friend Julie Roads has a theory on the power of suck. It boils down to your ability to attract what you want, whether it be the perfect pair of boots or a career opportunity. (You can also repel it or otherwise interfere with your suck, but the point is, you’re in charge of it.) Being a goal-oriented, self-motivated type myself, the idea instantly appealed.
However, I hit a glitch when I tried it out myself. OK, more than a glitch. It didn’t work.
Exhibit A is our current living room remodel. Coming up on seven years in our house - seven years in which we
Room for take off - but no flight plan
co-existed with the carpet that came with the place and the furniture my husband and I each brought from our single households — we decided this is the year to yank up that carpet, refinish the hardwood underneath and get new furniture. Specifically, a sectional sofa. I wanted that to maximize seating in a room whose furniture configurations are constrained by three doorways, two windows, one closet and a fixed cable jack - or so we thought.
But after multiple rounds of online browsing (NOTE: West Elm, I will buy when I’m good and ready, so stop putting your ads in front of me) and trips to real furniture stores later, I am ready to concede. The sectional I want - on legs, attached back cushions, low back so as not to block the room’s main window — does not exist. No amount of sucking will make it exist.
So while I pouted, the furniture part of the project went on hiatus. Meantime, the carpet was ripped out Monday. Lo and behold, underneath it we found three other little holes in that wood floor through which we can thread the cable, freeing the TV from the place it occupied for the last seven years. Poof! Just like that, without any mental manipulation on my part, away flew one of the project’s chief constraints.
Everything had to come out of the room in order to pull the carpet, of course. So the TV went to the basement, where I didn’t expect we’d even bother to hook it up. But my husband did. Three days on, I find I love its absence from the living room. Now, I’m not one of those who’s down on “all that junk” on TV. Not hardly. Without the 8 a.m. showing of Curious George on PBS to entertain my son, I wouldn’t have taken a shower for an entire year. But with screens and LEDs in every other room in the house, I’m discovering an electronic oasis — not to mention one from the kids who clamor to watch it, too — is a wonderful thing.
To review: Three weeks ago I had mentally spent my budget, selected a nonexistent sectional sofa, arranged the fictitious furniture and had a painter on standby. I had sucked, all right - I had sucked all the fun of discovery from the process to expedite my envisioned end. (I confess, this is a pattern. I’m big on ends. Not so much on means to them.)
Today, I have a room with a scuffed wood floor, empty but for my husband’s bachelor couch and a single, bare-bulb lamp. And I’m reveling in the possibilities we’ve literally made space for. Maybe the TV will come back upstairs. Maybe we will get a sectional now that it doesn’t have to fit in one particular corner. Maybe we’ll leave it like it is, mostly empty, and try sitting on the floor like Japanese d0.
After the carpet was out, I threw some remnants on the floor, thinking it would serve a road for my son’s toy trucks and cars. The kids had another idea. They lined up the scraps, creating a runway to the old couch, and repeatedly launched themselves onto it — see pic above. Watching them take off over and over was instructive. No plan was constructed, no sucking undertaken. In a glance, they had sized up the raw materials, literally jumped on it, and were having a grand time.
As a concept, sucking doesn’t suck. It can be real and it has its place. But for this living room project, anyway, that place is up on a shelf.
