I’m Letting Myself Have a Crush…on Life

 

Lately, I’ve been letting myself have crushes again.

Not necessarily on people.

Although, apparently, Siri has other ideas. (Siri is hijacking my playlist as I write this. Flooding me with 70s to 90s love songs. 🙄)

I mean the small kind of crushes.

The ones that make you linger a little longer.

Pick something up just to look at it.

Think about it later for no particularly sensible reason.

The kind that make an ordinary afternoon feel just a little more interesting.

I have a crush on reading again.

For a while, books had started to feel almost like another item on a list. Something I should make time for. Something good for me. Something productive.

I was a voracious reader from childhood to my 20s. 

But life got in the way - 

Mommyhood, priorities change, careers, homeschool. 

And then somewhere along the way, I started wanting them again.

Wanting to disappear into another world for a few chapters.

Wanting to sit somewhere quiet with a book in my hand and nowhere else I needed to be.

Wanting to know what happens next.

That little pull came back.

And I’m enjoying it.

I still have a crush on cute pens, too.

This one may be incurable.

Give me a tiny pen with a ridiculous character on top, a pretty barrel, an unnecessary charm, or ink that writes more smoothly than expected and suddenly I am twelve years old again.

Do I need another pen?

That is not the point.

A crush has never been particularly concerned with practicality.

And now there are watercolors.

This one is new.

I didn’t plan it.

I certainly didn’t sit down and decide that this would become my newest thing.

I just started painting.

Then I wanted to try another fruit. Then another flower. Then a landscape. 

And another.

Then I started noticing how pigments move through water. How one green separates into several quieter greens. How a brush can make something delicate one moment and completely unruly the next.

Now I find myself looking at colors differently.

At leaves.

At shadows.

At the way light hits petals.

It feels a little like being introduced to the world again.

I find myself photographing ridiculous things because I suddenly find them beautiful and I want to paint them. 

And maybe that is what having a crush does.

It makes you pay attention.

I have a crush on perfume bottles sitting beautifully on a dresser.

On stationery I actually use instead of saving forever.

On finding a new song and playing it far too many times.

On wandering through a bookstore without needing to buy anything.

On a meal I suddenly cannot stop thinking about.

On discovering a new color combination.

On tiny things that make me think:

I want more of this.

Not forever.

Not necessarily seriously.

Just more.

I think adulthood sometimes teaches us to become terribly reasonable about joy.

We start asking whether something is useful.

Whether it is worth the money.

Whether we have time.

Whether we are already too old for it.

Whether we are good enough at it.

Whether anyone else will understand why we like it so much.

But a crush doesn’t ask for a five-year plan.

It doesn’t need to become a business.

It doesn’t need to turn into mastery.

It doesn’t even need to last.

Sometimes it is simply a spark that makes Tuesday afternoon more interesting.

And perhaps I need more of those.

Little fascinations.

Small obsessions.

Things that make me lean closer.

Things that make me curious.

Things that make life feel flirtatious again.

So yes.

I’m letting myself have a crush on life.

On books.

On paint.

On ridiculous pens.

On beautiful scents.

On a random orange tree vine I see during a car ride.

On whatever catches my eye next.

I don’t need to marry every interest.

I don’t need to commit.

I can just enjoy the butterflies.

And if tomorrow I find myself completely smitten with something new?

Well.

I suppose life and I are still flirting. 💗

—-

With elegance and quiet fire,
Lady E

Founder, Glow by Lady E 
An editorial space for stories, art, and intentional living