Rooms, Repairs, and the Care of Things
Week 18
One of my favourite pastimes has always been browsing apartment listings. It’s not that I’m looking to purchase property, but rather that I enjoy observing how people design the interiors of their homes. Many years ago, I used to frequently browse profiles of creatives on FvF, where their homes and workspaces were often featured. These spaces revealed something subtle about their craft. I found many of these pieces inspiring and their setups interesting. This is a shared feeling with the more popular version being the numerous blogs showcasing people’s “workstation” setups. Although real estate ads usually offer staged setups, they still reflect a certain collective aesthetic sensibility. In Sweden, for instance, staged apartments tend toward a minimalistic, Scandinavian style. In staged photographs this can sometimes lack practicality. A kitchen counter displaying nothing but salt, pepper, and olive oil may appear clean and visually appealing, but to me, it seems sterile, lacking the warmth of daily use. Yet, many listings showcase a slice of the life of the people living there. If nothing else, they occasionally inspire new design/interior decor ideas.
Growing up in a family that felt almost compelled to perennialy rearrange furniture, I was exposed early on to thinking consciously about interior spaces. It was a time when everyone seemed to hold an opinion about interior design, regardless of their experience or merit. As a result, considering how I arrange the spaces I inhabit became second nature to me—shaped not only by my own taste but also by observing the homes of others. In the seventeen years since I have left India, I’ve lived long-term in two different countries and at over fourteen addresses(!?), ranging from dorm rooms to hotels to apartments. Everywhere I’ve lived, I’ve attempted to create something resembling a home. From the aesthetic qualities of objects to the very existence of certain items in a space, I’ve consciously (though not always) tried to incorporate a sense of personality and intentionality. At the same time, I’ve also attempted, as far as possible, to accept the unchangeable aspects of some living situations. This is frequently the case with student dorms or furnished rentals, where only so much can be altered in spaces that inherently feel temporary. For instance, I once lived in a room with wardrobes painted an morbid shade of teal blue. The color shade of those wardrobes created a subtle but persistent depression — one I only fully recognized when I moved to another room where the wardrobes were simply white. It felt at times like the white was literally giving me energy.
I firmly believe that the way we arrange our living spaces directly shapes how we feel within them. This seems especially true for creative work, where even slight imbalances in the environment can affect one’s sense of ease. It’s often said that one shouldn’t wait for inspiration, and that the best creative work emerges simply from the habit of showing up. While this is true, and routines undoubtedly help us exercise the muscle memory, creative work still remains fundamentally tied to some sort of feeling. The discipline is what brings it out, but the feeling is what begins it in the first place. To engage meaningfully in any form of the creative process, there must be some baseline sense of alignment or comfort, even if the work itself might deal with discomfort or imbalance.
In Stockholm, I’ve had to move constantly. There’s little stability in renting here, and the country seems to inherently favour ownership over rental. While there is subsidised, rent-controlled housing available through a public queuing system, this remains mostly inaccessible to non-citizens (and even many citizens). The private rental market, on the other hand, is not only quite expensive due to the ongoing housing shortage but also doesn’t offer lasting stability. It’s common to have to move every year, if not every few months. The sense of temporariness attached to each home I’ve inhabited here has been more pronounced than in any other country I’ve lived in. Even the two fragmented months I spent living out of a hotel in Melbourne felt less transient than some of my apartments in Stockholm. I’ve been in my current apartment for nine months, with the previous two lasting roughly eight months each.
This lack of stability in living situations creates a certain emotional detachment from the spaces one occupies. It’s disorienting because this detachment gradually seeps into other areas of life as well. Why invest in nice cutlery if you’re moving soon and risk breaking it during the move? Why buy a quality sofa when an inferior, second-hand one will suffice, knowing you’ll soon have to relocate, risking damage or dirt along the way? While some of this reasoning is practical, I feel it’s also quietly becoming dangerous for me. It becomes too easy for me to slip into the inertia of questioning the value of making any meaningful effort at home when the home itself feels so temporary. “It’s hard to live one foot out and one foot in,” writes Tommy Dixon in Commit before you’re ready. The past few weeks have been particularly taxing in navigating this state of continuous “temporary-ism” (yes, I coined it) alongside some expected and unexpected life events.
So, it was perhaps a subconscious attempt to counter this disconnection that made me wake up today and go through with a plan to service my bike. A friend and I had agreed to meet up and work on our bikes together. Our timing turned out to be exceptionally poor, as we’d chosen what felt like the coldest day in the past two months, with a windchill of zero degrees and barely any sun. The weather alone was miserable enough, but I decided to persevere anyway. To compound matters further, my thumb and palm muscle were the size of a golf ball and I didn’t have much of a grip without also having a severe, shooting pain, having sustained an injury during a football game a day prior. Then, in an impatient moment while pulling out a tire to fix a puncture, I managed to stab myself in the same hand right through a fingernail with the spokes of the rear chain cassette. Consequently, my left hand is completely out of commission, making even the slightest moves staggeringly painful, not to mention me wondering whether I now need a Tetanus shot.
Yet, despite everything, we managed to service our bikes and prepare them for the approaching summer. On an otherwise frustrating day, marking the culmination of several difficult weeks, I have found that one antidote to the frantic disconnectedness of recent experience is simply to slow down and commit. To pause, to consider, and to commit fully to tasks, and see them through. To do fewer things, perhaps, but to do them with greater intention and attention. In some ways, it already started early this year with me unintentionally watching a movie a week and then deciding to just keep going with it until I reached 52 movies or 52 weeks. This weekend I compiled a list