It’s Never Too Late to Go Back to School: I’m 38, a Mama, and going back to school for Interior Design
I’m not sure why this is so scary to put this out there, but yes I’m going back to school! I just started online classes at Parsons The New School for Interior Design. It’s been a long time dream of mine to transition into interior design full time and start my “second life”, and I’ve been so intimidated to make the leap. I made up every excuse in the book from time to money to my age, and to be honest learning something completely new sounded completely terrifying.
I’ve worked in Fashion since the age of 20 (well technically longer if you count my mall retail jobs at age 16:), and now I’m 38. Since having Coyote four years ago, I’ve been feeling a change on the horizon but I wasn’t quite sure what it was. I mean yes I had a dream to be an interior designer, but it never seemed possible. I knew Interior Design was what I was passionate about, but I kept coming up with distractions and excuses why I couldn’t do it. This year I started working with a therapist, and through working with her and listening to several self-help books, I was able to finally get clear about exactly what I wanted to do and how badly I wanted to do it. I want to be an Interior Designer! It’s taken a long time to get here, and even say it out-loud. I would say for the past four years I’ve been hearing this “whisper” (as Oprah would call it). My life was whispering to me every day, I just was just too scared to listen. I’d ignored it for so long, my whisper had turned into a full-blown scream.
As a kid, I grew up watching my dad renovate and restore every house we lived in. I wish I paid more attention, or that he taught me what he knew. I watched him demo walls, put up framing and sheetrock, build pergolas from scratch and install full bathrooms from top to bottom. I never had an outlet (or so I thought) to explore my interest in Interior Design and renovation until we bought The Blanco Bungalow. I definitely experimented and did what I could with rentals, but there was never that sense of permanence where I felt I could really dive in and make the space my own. With our new house though, there was so much I wanted to tackle right off the bat, from full on construction projects, DIY’s, and basically re-designing every room from scratch. But there was also so much I didn’t know, and still don’t know. We’ve figured out what we could so far from YouTube and research, but most of the time, we’ve learned through trial and error. It’s true, there is a science behind design, and I’m so excited to dive in and learn everything I need to know to turn this dream into a reality.
I’m so happy to start this next chapter and take The Blanco Bungalow to the next level!
If you have any questions, please comment below. I’ll be posting updates and projects I’m working on, so please follow along!
