10/2/19
Remember me? Yeah me neither… I’ve kind of lost myself these past several months. I’ve lost myself in thoughts, projects, travels, and just the inevitable business of everyday life. So much has happened since I last wrote in December and yet I feel like I’ve barely gotten anything done. Am I the only one who’s ever felt that? Also, honesty time - I’m TERRIBLE at social media. I don’t understand how people can post everyday when I obviously struggle with the motivation to post once every six months (okay nine months)! I’m so focused on getting projects done that I find it a drag to take the time to stop, snap some pictures, try to conjure up a nice little description, and post it on all the different platforms once a week. Honestly, now that I write it out it seems really easy… I’m probably just a big fat wimp. But kudos to you all who can do that consistently! Teach me your ways!
While we’re at it, let me just share with you another one of my struggles cause that’s fun, right? Let’s find out. Here we go… I struggle with feeling like what I accomplish is actually good enough… “Whoa, Ashley, keep that to yourself! A little honesty is fine but that’s too much dont you think? Yuck!” All these things we do on the property both for business and personal I find so fun and exciting but I’m always telling myself, “Okay, you’re making good progress but it’s not quite good enough to show people yet.” and so when you continue to tell yourself that throughout all the checkpoints of a project you find that you never truly feel like it’s ready to be publicised. Sure it may be good enough for you but what if other people don’t feel the same? This is a huge part of why I struggle with finding the motivation to post on social media too. So after lots of self examination I’ve been burdened with the question, “Is it better to make one small step at a time knowing it’s gonna be rough and inconsistent, but hey, at least each one gets me a little closer to my goal, or do I just never even try.” So I’ve decided to just never even try… NO I’m just kidding! Here’s to knowing that it’s going to be rough and inconsistent but doing it anyway because who freaking cares, I’m challenging myself, and if I fail in front of you all, who freaking cares, I can always get back up and try it again. I only lose if I lose to the fear of failing and therefore never even try. So here we go for round two! I’m just going to do the best I can and that’s all I can promise.
Lets Get Into It Shall We
I’m a hopeless romantic. Not in the traditional sense necessarily. I love building things with my own two hands, with my own mind. I’ve loved it ever since I was a little girl. Playing at my aunt and uncles was one of my absolute favorites since they lived in the country and had two old barns with endless opportunities to create. On top of that my uncle worked in construction so there was always a goldmine of scrap lumber around. I would get these ideas in my head and get so excited to bring them to life! Building forts with actual windows and doors, wheelchairs out of old bicycle tires and a folding chair, a bathroom for the 2nd floor of the barn made of a turned up traffic cone and a gutter system. Sure that sounds a little redneck looking back now but first off we were rednecks so….. and secondly, as a kid stopping in the middle of your playing to use the bathroom feels like SUCH an inconvenience, right? Sure trees are nice or behind some old piece of equipment but what if you were a girl on the second floor of the barn? Yeah, I thought I was a genius who just solved an impossible math equation. Now our playing could be so efficient! But these creative dreams and visions came with a negative. I was also stubborn. Once I got the idea in my head I got so excited about it that it was almost impossible to talk me out of it. I loved rearranging my room so I was constantly putting nail holes in the wall to hang all my things. I say nail holes but a lot of the time they were screw holes that I’d hammer in because I ran out of nails. At the time I thought I was just resourceful. My parents didn’t quite share that same opinion when it came time to filling those holes back in when we’d move about every year. Now I’m grown up and married and I still have those same visions, passions, creative dreams and ideas, aaaaaand also that same stubbornness. Yay… My sweet Nathanael also has so many visions, passions, and creative dreams and ideas, and in the grand scheme of things our dreams are almost identical and I feel so blessed! BUT, since we’ve bought this property we’ve had so many conflicting ideas on the best way to reach those dreams so it’s taken us a looooot longer than we had anticipated to reach them. It’s been incredibly challenging but there’s also been so much growth between the two of us even though I don’t always like the forms in which it comes. Sure it would’ve been nice if it was all just smooth sailing and we saw eye to eye on everything and he just realized that my way of doing things is obviously the best way and that I’m a genius angel sent to him from the Lord himself and he should be eternally grateful for my wisdom, that’d be great. But we all have our faults ;) TOTALLY kidding, I suck. Nathanael is so incredibly smart and has so many great ideas that I’m so thankful for! He challenges me in ways that I need, is strong in ways that I have to admit I’m weak, pushes me outside my comfort zone and when I’m not blinded by my stubbornness, I can truly say I’m grateful for that! There are a lot of things I would have done differently had I been in this venture alone, as I know Nathanael would say the same. But I’m excited to see what the collaboration of Nathanael and Ashley looks like and has already started to look like! We have a big project coming up that has been in the works for 2+ years and even though I wanted it 2+ years ago, what we’ve come up with now is far better than what I would have rushed into then.
Currently...
Now aside from the project we’ve been planning forever that I’m excited to announce in the near future, the most recent project we’ve gotten ourselves into is… well we’re not really sure what to call it because we’ve never really seen it done before on a house but we’ve seen things somewhat like it. So right now we’re just calling it a partial conservatory front porch? Anyway, we attached a front porch to our house which we spend 90% of our mornings on. I’ve been awful at updating pictures because, again, there are little details that aren’t finished yet so I tell myself it’s just better to wait… There’s more interior trim to be added and I’m starting on the landscaping bed and official front step this week! I wanted to wait to post anything until it was all completed but we keep adding things so who knows if it will ever actually be “completed”.
Want To Follow Our Venture?
If you’d like to follow our venture I’d love to see you follow our pages @ThePreludeXII on Facebook and Instagram. I hope to encourage people to not deify common sense and to go all in for their passions and purpose and if this only encourages one single person to do that than it's more than worth it!