STARTING OVER, BY YOURSELF

I might as well be up-front about it: I’m going through a break-up (er… divorce). It’s a struggle for many reasons, as you can either relate to or imagine. But aside from the immense emotional and financial turmoil, it’s the little, every-day adjustments that have caught me most off-guard. And from these small conquests I have learned the largest lessons about embracing this new phase of life. So here they are.

1. Start where you are…

…but with a crystal-clear goal in mind.

After the big move-out, my 1-bedroom Denver apartment was almost completely barren and in need of some serious home-design TLC. Armed with my credit card, some extra spending dough, and naive determination, I entered IKEA, bright-eyed and on a mission.

While I couldn’t get everything I wanted (or even needed), I decided to focus on pieces that truly inspire me and bring me joy (can you tell I’ve recently discovered the Kon Mari method?). It required laser-sharp focus to not frantically throw items into my cart just to fill the glaring voids in my apartment. Every piece will have a thoughtful purpose, I thought to myself.

A few hundred dollars and a lot of exhaustion later, I arrived home with many new pieces in tow—and many voids still left unfilled. This is the process of truly redesigning a life. Wait to spring for the right things when they appear; do not force the wrong things to stand in their place. This requires focus in two areas: 1.) patience to wait and say yes to the right thing, and 2.) discipline to say no to the wrong thing in the meantime.

2. Rely first on yourself.

You’ll always find a way.

So I had all the necessities in tow. Now I needed to get the IKEA boxes to my 3rd-floor apartment. With many friends out enjoying the magic of Denver’s rare 65-degree weekends in late January, I was committed to not employing any help in this feat. After hauling a massive leaning mirror and smaller items up the stairs, I was exhausted and perplexed at how I was going to get the dresser assembly box up the stairs, let alone how I was going to assemble it by myself.

Tired and delirious in a way only an IKEA-excursion-after-a-full-day-of-work can elicit, I decided to retire for the evening (I do believe pizza and wine were involved). And a few more evenings, at that.

And then, after a few days of resting easy on the conundrum, I realized that, while I would not be able to carry the entire boxed dresser up the stairs by myself, I could, in fact, open the box up in the back of my car and bring up the parts separately.

And that’s what I did.

100 years later (more or less), I stood, hands on hips, looking down at all the dresser parts on the floor and all the possibility (and headaches) that lay before me.

3. Run the mile you’re in.

I read this quote in an article about running recently, and it hit home. While the zoom-out button is superb for reminding yourself of how little your problems are, the zoom-in button is great for conquering your (fixable) problems in practical ways.

Instead of looking at these bags of Swedish crap on my floor (sorry, IKEA people), I looked at Step 1 and only Step 1 until Step 1 was completed. Then repeated that with Step 2. You never know how the eff you’re going to get to the zoomed-out finished product until, somehow, All the Steps have each been zoomed-in on.

4. Determine which mistakes need fixing.

Halfway through the more difficult dresser-assembly steps, I realized that I’d mistaken one large piece for another, which had already been screwed in, locked in, and added to. At first my perfectionism and determination to “build this gosh-darned dresser alone” seduced me into thinking I should take it apart and start again. And at first I thought that was the lesson I needed to learn.

But after further, careful inspection, I realized this wasn’t a mistake worth rectifying. It was merely a superficial error (and yet not visible!) and would not threaten the integrity of the structure. And so I kept on building.

5. Relish in the beauty of your hard work.

Three and a half hours (and a lot of snack breaks) later, the dresser was not a heap of randomness but a full-blown piece of furniture—and my first one, at that! The pride could not be wiped from my face for days. I sent before and after pictures to all my close loved ones (the people I know would over-dramaticize the scope of my accomplishment) and relished in my new, sleek, white dresser.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how you build an IKEA dresser—and perhaps, might I presume, an authentic, happy life—alone.

HAVE YOU EVER BUILT FURNITURE BY YOURSELF?