So We Bought an Old Church 2/2

So We Bought An Old Church

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7) The Last 36 Hours

Your former you owes your current you a big apology. “Meh… we’ll have this house packed up in no time,” former you confidently says. And reality however, determined that was a major blunder on your part. In the last 36 hours you and David have spent 28 of them frantically packing and loading your entire existence into a 118 degree, 26 foot long UHaul. You don’t keep a lot of things, your home is mostly tidy and neat, yet magically on moving day…more and more items appear in

Vanessa LuhVek

Aug 4, 20254 min read

6) The Cardboard City

“That sounds like you’ve been doing a lot of processing… Do you have any idea what that may mean?” Asks your good friend. You had told her about that vivid studio dream. “Yes actually. I had thought about this. I think that my messy, mostly packed studio represents my life here in St Petersburg. It’s coming to an end but I’m not quite ready to leave… I feel like someone else packing me up is me knowing that my time here is ending and not quite being able to sever myself from

Vanessa LuhVek

Jul 21, 20254 min read

5) The Studio

It’s your happy place. Your safe space. It’s cheery. White walls, soaring ceiling… spray foam inbetween the beams, painted white… everything white. There’s the loft space that your kids love. Every time they come in they head right up to the loft, ipads in hand and they climb the little ladder where they disappear in the back behind the white canvas walls. David put some boards behind the fabric so that the kids would never make the mistake and lean backwards. It’s like a lit

Vanessa LuhVek

Jul 16, 20258 min read

4) The Farmer, The Fox, The Feed, And The Hen

A farmer stands on a river bank. He has quite the conundrum: He must get himself, his fox, his hen, and a bag of feed safely to the other side, but he can only take one with him at a time, and the fox can not be left alone with the hen, or the hen left alone with the feed. You were given two pieces of blue yarn and told to place them on your desk vertically and parallel to one another (your river). Then your third grade teacher came around and gave you each four popsicle stic

Vanessa LuhVek

Jul 14, 20256 min read

3) A 4x6 Battle Proven Anxiety Destroyer Wrapped in Cellophane

Just like that. Imagine that shit. A simple fucking list. HA! The nights you spent in a cold sweat. All those times you were rattled out of a dead sleep. The tossing. The turning. The nausea that churned your guts. And the a solution: a single ruled end to the madness, wrapped neatly in cellophane. Order out of the chaos. Stacked neatly, organized, a list of worst cases; but also plausible, reasonable, earth steadying solutions. Ha! You had scanned articles feverishly… “Is it

Vanessa LuhVek

Jul 9, 20254 min read

2) The Switch.

It was as if a switch had been flipped. The certainty I had was gone. Instantaneously. It was not a growing feeling… a piece by piece dismantling, but rather like a game of Jenga… the long buildup before the tower comes crashing down. I was living the crash. Waves of anxiety swept over me in a steady torrent. My chest grew tight. Severe bouts of nausea came and went. At night I didn’’t sleep. Normally I sleep soundly… but now I was waking up 2-3 times a night in a cold sweat,

Vanessa LuhVek

Jul 7, 20257 min read

Ready for a new adventure, our house goes on the market.

1) So We Bought An Old Church: A Leap of Faith

You feel your stomach jump. You’re sure you will vomit. This new you, this new you that sold her house and bought a church is a lot less ballsy now… what the hell happened? Personally: You’d love to know what the hell was wrong with you.

Vanessa LuhVek

Jun 30, 20256 min read