– And Other Motivations

By Maida Korte

“You can’t get there by bus, only by hard work and risk and by not quite knowing what you’re doing. What you’ll discover will be wonderful. What you’ll discover will be yourself.” 

– Alan Alda

          Motivation to complete a task takes many forms.  Some of these are internal in nature based squarely on the shoulders of personality traits.  Other forms of motivation are external and include threats, cajoling, and begging on one side of the spectrum with encouragement, praise and applaud on the other.  I have always possessed a certain amount of intestinal fortitude which has served me well in my school days, but when it came to earning money, I was less than focused in my early years of working for a living.

           Purposeful to others, but fragmented behind my eyes, I rushed head-long to multiple forms of work.  Waitress, mail-room assistant, paper delivery girl, cook, house organizer, collection agency clerk, jazzercize instructor, gymnastics dance coach, all filled my resume in a very short span of two years.  A gung-ho response got me in the door, but a bored collective my soul could not compromise had me out the door a few weeks later.  It was not until I began using my schooling of art and design to gain clients whose houses needed help, that I found my ultimate niche. The ability to meet a project head on, ever changing, always new, each project piquing my interest, ultimately won my heart.  This career also brought in enough money so I could take my children to the fabric store where we would pore over patterns and plaids, sewing up wardrobes for my little girls. 

          Whenever I am asked about my work, I respond by saying that I am a design-build interior designer which begets responses that are all positive, even wistful.

“How fun!”

“Oh, you are so lucky!”

“I wish I could do that.” 

This is the consensus and I stopped, a long time ago, trying to change their minds.  I suppose it does have a romantic ring about it, stepping across a threshold to transform a space and therefore, transform lives.  What was an ordinary existence will now become serene, orderly, well-planned, showing forth the fruits of the spirit as everything is whisked away to its proper place.  Families living in beauty, surrounded by order, and I have saved them.  The truth is so far from this dream to be laughable.  Most clients are exhausted at the end of projects and the end comes just in the nick of time.   

Rarely does a project fall apart because a roof caves in, or the flooring finish fails, or water cascades over foundation walls in a basement.  It is generally death by a thousand cuts and these take the form of a popped nail, lunch garbage left behind by laborers, power tools blowing circuits, floor protection failing, a cat let out inadvertently, or someone not showing up at the promised time.  Each of these things is smallish considering the largeness of each project but they still cause anxiety and erode trust.  I am aware of the precious privilege of the client/designer relationship and I do endeavor to manage expectations but I get it wrong.  We are late because things don’t come in on a timely promised basis.  Men get sick, finishes don’t fit, clients change their mind, rain stops almost everything, and though everyone is working hard to maintain a certain decorum of politeness, frayed nerves begin to leak like a faucet with a broken washer.   

It is my job to show up, to explain, to answer, to take it and so I sit in my car, knowing that a disappointed client might be waiting to talk to me.  I do not like confrontation and will do just about anything to avoid it.  I deflect, defer, detour, and run away.  I have been like this my whole life, even when I have admirably hidden this particular trait from the world.  My brave face is well oiled and yet I struggle with the anxiety of crowded brain syndrome.  Still, I sit in my car.

My husband Andy reminds me of my lovely clients.  Those clients who call me to come back, to help, to rescue them yet again.  Those clients who serve pizza to the sub-contractors and smile when we come marching in to dirty their home with work boots and loud tools and equipment.  These are the heroes of the story and I run to their doors, as Natty running through the forest.  Yes, I remember you.  You have made my working life joyful and it is to you I bow.

  My motivation comes from a land outside of myself. It comes from being surrounded by a family so resilient as to be ridiculous, so brilliant as to showcase me as a doddering fool, a husband so kind and hilariously dry of wit as to make life impossibly fun, and daughters who continue to amaze me that they could be mine.  I am surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses that I tell myself to get out of the car.  Just one more time.