I build furniture when the world gets to be too much.
Not metaphorically. Literally. I find a piece of wood, a project, a problem with a grain and a finish and a set of dimensions that need solving, and I work on it until the noise in my head matches the quiet in my hands. It is one of my oldest outlets and one of my most reliable ones. The wood does not care about my calendar or my deadlines or the seventeen things I am managing simultaneously. It just sits there waiting to become something.
Right now, I am in the middle of repatriating a coffee table.
It has solid wood slats. Mid-century modern. A piece I loved in my twenties from an estate sale at a time when my adult life was just starting. Somehow, it made the journey to South Carolina with only three of its four legs. The fourth has been located in New Jersey and will be reunited with its siblings eventually. In the meantime, the table has a temporary assignment – I am adding taller legs, sanding them down to match the aesthetic, and finishing them to align with the walnut patina of the original slats. It becomes a two-level plant stand in my garage for my winterizing plants. Useful. Dignified. Waiting for its full restoration without complaint.
I relate to that table more than I care to admit.
What wood teaches you that nothing else does.
Wood is unpredictable. Every piece has its own grain, its own character, its own opinion about what it wants to become. You cannot force it. You can only learn it – understand how it moves, where it wants to split, which direction it sands smooth and which direction it fights you.
But the methodology. The cadence of working with wood – the measuring, the cutting, the sanding, the finishing, the patience between coats – that is completely reliable. You follow the steps and the wood rewards you. It does not matter what else is happening in your life. The process holds.
My consulting work is about organizational change. My personal life runs across three countries. Life moves fast and rarely in a straight line. Everything I do professionally is about navigating the unpredictable.
The wood gives me a system I can count on. A cadence that does not move. And at the end of it something beautiful that did not exist before I started.
That is not nothing. That is everything.
The soul underneath the modern life.
I want to tell you something about myself that sounds contradictory until it does not.
My soul feels like a wealthy 1920s housewife in Harlem.
Not the struggle version. The soft life version. The woman who puts on dinner parties for her very comfortable and besotted husband in a beautifully appointed apartment where everything has been chosen with intention and care. Where the table is set properly. Where the food is made from recipes that live in the body rather than on a page. Where the home is a statement of who she is and what she values and how she wants the people she loves to feel when they walk through the door.
That is my spirit. That is my natural resting state.
My current reality looks nothing like it. I am a consultant running a very full life in constant motion. I thrive on change. I am the person called when organizations need to be dismantled and rebuilt and I do it with the energy of someone who genuinely loves the chaos of transformation.
Both of these things are completely true at the same time.
And the furniture is where they meet.
Old soul. Modern life. The sweetest spot in between.
I am a fan of new things. My aesthetic is genuinely modern. I outsource aggressively and without apology because outsourcing is how I protect my time and my energy for the things only I can do.
But give me an estate sale on a Saturday morning and I am lost for hours. That particular thrill of finding the rare piece- the one that has lived somewhere and carries the weight of that living in its finish and its wear- there is nothing like it. That is bliss for me. Pure, uncomplicated bliss.
My home reflects this balance in the most literal way.
A mustard-colored velvet couch with wooden legs paired with an ultra-modern chaise. Yes. That is me. An abstract black and white Afrocentric painting flanked by antique African masks. Yes. That is also me. The old and the new in conversation, neither one apologizing for the other, both of them earning their place in the room by how they feel rather than by any logic I can fully articulate.
Personal style has nothing to do with logic. It has everything to do with feeling. And your personal meter of balance – that internal sensor that tells you when something is right even before you can explain why – that is the thing worth developing. Once it is calibrated you know. You just know. The room is done. The outfit is right. The piece belongs.
It is like adding spices to a dish and letting your ancestors tell you when to stop. There is no measurement. There is only the moment when something in you says – there. That is it. Do not add another thing.
Life should work like that.
I am designing mine so that it does.
What the coffee table is really about.
The table with three legs is not just a furniture project. It is a philosophy.
You take the thing you love – the piece that has been with you since the beginning, that carries the memory of who you were when you first chose it – and you find a way to make it useful in its current condition while you wait for it to be complete. You do not discard it because it is not whole. You do not force it into a role it cannot currently fill. You honor what it is right now and trust that the missing piece is coming.
Meanwhile it’s gonna hold the plants. It does its work. It waits without complaint.
That is old soul energy in a modern life. Patience with a purpose. Usefulness without desperation. The absolute certainty that the fourth leg is in New Jersey and it is coming home.
And when it does, the table will be exactly where it was always supposed to be.
So will I.
What is your outlet when the world gets too loud? The thing you do with your hands that quiets everything else? Drop it in the comments.
