Dagmar - The Editor

I've been thinking about Dagmar's comments about how she likes to "edit" her house. She did one of the exercises in Wishcraft, which was to view her house as a stranger would and imagine who lived there. She said she gets a lot of satisfaction in rearranging and refining her home.

Dagmar, I thought this showed an interest in editing, and we talked a little bit about how you prefer editing to writing original content at work. This seems to fit with your interest in having a salon or a winery--a place where you can bring creative people together and offer them a space to interact and show off their work.

But in thinking back about this exchange, what strikes me now is that in "editing" your house you aren't editing another's work, but rather your own. You and Tom created a really beautiful home from a place that was a bit derelict when you first moved in. It was a shared effort, but I know from having visited you many times at your previous apartment that you have always had the ability to "stage" your home.

I'm not suggesting you should think about becoming an interior designer (although maybe you should). I am suggesting that your temperament is such that you thrive on having a creative project--whether it's a novel, a painting, a home or a garden--that allows you to slowly develop an idea over time. You need something that allows you to change your mind and dig up last year's decision and replant it--maybe the red tulips should move to the other corner and the nasturtium should move from the back yard to a hanging basket at the front door.

That would suggest that what you're doing now--creating proposals for multiple projects at the same time and sending them out the door to never see them again--does not feed into what you truly enjoy.