My special interests have shifted and evolved throughout my life, but the intensity behind them was always the same.
As a kid and teenager, many of my interests looked fairly normal for girls my age, so no one thought much of them. But looking back now, I realize I never really did anything casually.
In sixth grade, I became obsessed with nails. I filed and painted them constantly and became very good at it. I noticed everyone’s hands, always analyzing nail shape, nail beds, finger length, chipped polish. I took pride in having perfectly manicured nails and genuinely felt bothered by neglected ones.
Years later I started getting acrylic nails with a French manicure. At a wedding once, a photographer complimented my hands and told me I should be a hand model. People often said I had “piano hands,” and I was oddly proud of that.
Then came makeup. That became another fixation well into adulthood. My mother often made comments that these things were vain, which made me feel guilty, but it never stopped the fascination.
Even clothing carried emotional weight.
I remember wanting to wear a cropped shirt once because my friend wore them. My mom immediately warned me about unwanted attention and lectured me enough that I never wore it. I gave it away instead.
I wore black most of the time because it felt easy. Predictable. Low stress. It matched everything and required less thought and energy. My mom would always ask why I didn’t wear more color. I ignored the comments outwardly, but they stayed with me.
As I got older, my interests shifted from appearance to my environment.
When I bought the house I lived in for nearly twenty years with my son and his dad, it was a brand new build. Everything was white, plain, and untouched. The second I walked in, I knew I needed to change it.
We immediately started painting walls bold colors and decorating in unconventional ways. My spouse at the time was artistic too, so he joined in on many of the projects. Over the years I became completely absorbed in home improvement shows, decorating ideas, landscaping, and rearranging rooms whenever I felt restless or uninspired.
My home became my sanctuary.
Yard work quickly became one of my biggest obsessions. Planting flowers, landscaping, trimming bushes, redesigning spaces… I could lose entire days outside without noticing time passing. Ideas would flood my mind faster than I could finish them.
I remember planting bushes in front of our porch and eventually deciding years later that I hated them because they blocked the small lake across the street. One day I suddenly could not tolerate them anymore.
I started digging them out myself before realizing the roots were much deeper than expected. So naturally, I came up with another plan.
I wrapped a rope around one of the bushes, attached it to my husband’s truck, hit the gas, and ripped the entire thing right out of the ground. I repeated the process with the others and then immediately moved on to dismantling the porch railing too.
I remember thinking afterward: my neighbors probably think I’m completely insane.
Another time, our backyard bushes and honeysuckle had become badly overgrown. I kept telling my husband we needed to trim them, but he didn’t think it was urgent. Eventually I hit a point where I physically could not tolerate looking at it anymore.
We didn’t even own the proper tools, but that didn’t stop me. Armed with a shovel, an electric chainsaw, and an extension cord, I spent the entire weekend cutting, digging, hauling, and clearing everything myself. Hours passed without breaks. I barely rested until it was finished.
The satisfaction afterward felt almost euphoric.
I would completely disappear into these projects and honestly… I loved it.
The house I live in now is older, larger, and full of character. The moment I stepped inside, it instantly felt like me. I knew immediately it was the one. My husband worried about the longer commute to work, but he knew how much I loved the house and supported it anyway.
Now the projects never really end, and neither do the ideas.
The yard feels like a sanctuary — trees, wildlife, nature everywhere. My decorating style has evolved over the years into something that finally feels fully authentic to me.
Looking back now, I realize these were never “just hobbies.”
Creating beautiful, comforting environments wasn’t superficial or random. It was regulation. Expression. Therapy. Escape. Joy.
I needed my surroundings to feel safe, peaceful, and like me.
My mom and I eventually started calling it “nesting.”
But I realize now it was much more than that.