Would Younger You Be Proud of You?

Hey friends. I hope you’re doing well and thanks for being here again today—this is post #6 already! Time flies when you’re padlocked behind a door and quickly becoming too pale for your tan foundation. Anyhow, I was chit-chatting with someone earlier this week about the idea of making your younger self proud. I actually think about that a lot. What would younger Arlyn think of older Arlyn if she knew her? I’d like to think YA (Young Arlyn, going forward) would be proud of OA (Older Arlyn). Maybe she’d be surprised that she left the editorial world to work (happily) in marketing for a furniture company instead of running her accessorizing empire like she once imagined—any of my friends remember The Accessories Junkie blog?!? I think she’d be starry-eyed to know some of her soon-to-be favorite publications—Domino, Apartment Therapy—would not only employ her in the near future but also feature her home…in Los Angeles no less…that she designed herself.
 
As OA, I feel like I have to fight for YA’s dreams all.the.time. Am I living up to YA’s expectations of what she thought life would look like in her mid-30s? It’s hard to say. I’d like to think yes, but I often stop and look through old photos of myself in my later teens and early 20s and believe somehow, maybe I haven’t fought hard enough for her.
 
Maybe it sounds weird, but I actually think it keeps me moving in the right direction most times. One reason I even started this newsletter, actually, was because I stumbled upon some images deep in the archives of my email that I had taken on the first day of work when I started as Managing Editor at Luxe Interiors + Design. That girl had BIG dreams, and I couldn’t let her down.

I had moved down to a new city for the job, got my first solo apartment, bought my first sofa (a $500 gray microfiber tufted beaut from Macy’s that I was immensely proud of), and promptly took a sharp turn from beauty and fashion lover to design fiend. Look at her. 26, naïve but full of unbridled passion, with a head of non-gray hairs…she had no idea. None of our younger selves ever do. It’s endearing, really.

Fun fact: I applied to that job thinking maybe one day I could transition to the parent company’s beauty magazine. Surely that’s where I fit in—I didn’t know toile from tulle but I could bend your ear for hours about hyaluronic acid and the best lengthening mascara. Sure, I had always decorated my rooms at my parents’ house (read on to see one of those spaces) but if it wasn’t on HGTV, I knew nothing about it. Somehow, I was able to talk my way into that job and TBH, it was one of the greatest things that had happened to me career-wise up until then and really carved out a path I never knew I wanted to walk down.

But YA had no clue that by happenstance, but also because DUH IT MAKES SO MUCH SENSE, she’d build her life around the pursuit of beautiful rooms and beautiful things arranged in beautiful ways.

Since I was already walking down memory lane, I remembered I had posted some photos years ago on Facebook of a bedroom I decorated. Man, I was SO proud of this room. It was the first “adult” bedroom I had designed for myself, start to finish. It was a far cry from my English rose garden theme from when I was 7 and the moon and stars motif when I was 14 (wherein I hung glow-and-the-dark stars from my popcorn ceilings with clear fishing wire so it looked like they were floating when I turned out the lights…*so proud*).

I sourced from all the best: IKEA, Target, TJ Maxx, Pier 1…and my mom’s stash of random stuff. I’m pretty sure I took that silver vase from somewhere in the house without asking and spray painted over its original terracotta color. I couldn’t be stopped. I was a woman possessed with the need to decorate a room (and evidently use up a can of spray paint. It was the first thing I ever posted on Facebook that wasn’t a photo of college shenanigans and “self-taken photos” (the word “selfie” didn’t exist back then…what a time to be alive). It got rave reviews from my five friends. 

I actually think it’s not so bad! There’s symmetry, a clear-cut color palette and intention. I mean, there are 12 pillows on the bed—I counted—but that was the pinnacle of class back in 2011 okay?!? I spray painted as much as I could in the name of COHESION. Spray-painted plastic palm fronds for the art above my bed (glued to scrapbook paper I, again, stole from my mom), more plastic foliage for the spray-painted vase, a spray-painted knob on my nightstand (but for some reason, not the knobs on the matching dresser).

That acrylic lamp on the HEMNES? Man, I loved it. I remember finding it in the Target clearance aisle for something like $12 and pairing it with a lampshade that it didn’t originally come with in the name of truly bucking the system. I got the idea from a glass lamp I saw at Restoration Hardware well before they rebranded to RH. I think it was upwards of $200 and I can’t forget wondering how anyone could ever spend that much on a lamp (tbh, I still wonder…WHY ARE LAMPS SO EXPENSIVE?!?). I MADE THAT HEADBOARD following a tutorial on Little Green Notebook and then proceeded to offer a custom headboard to literally everyone I knew. I swore I was going to make a business out of it. I was going to make a business out of anything and everything. 

Are there things about this room I’d change? Yeah, of course. It’s been 9 years. But for someone who was just dipping their toes into the seductive world of design, I think she did a pretty good job!

At the time, there was no Instagram to go to for inspiration, no Pinterest to scroll through or boards to save photos to. It was just my brain and my heart in a Home Goods/TJ Maxx telling me what to do. To be honest, it was kind of nice. I didn’t read design magazines at the time…I was going to be a beauty and fashion writer after all. The end result was what I wanted to do without the anxiety of what people on the internet might think about it.

While I’m in the process of planning out a re-do on my current master bedroom (I’ll share it soon!), I can’t help but look at these nearly decade-old photos and see how far I’ve come. YA, OA thinks you were really crafty, okay? I hope you’re proud of me, but I’m proud of you. You got me here and I’ll try not to let you down.