It’s been happening for many years now… a gradual draining of color from our surroundings. Buildings that used to be bright and colorful are now cold and grey. David Batchelor has a great book on this topic called Chromophobia, a book that I’ve been meaning to order myself for some time now. It’s not just buildings, but cars and homes, too. The only true splash of color in my neighborhood comes from one of my direct neighbors who painted the trim, house numbers, and doors a neon lime green in contrast to a black backing color on the walls.
I’ve personally have been inspired to bring a splash more color into my day to day life…
…but how do we do that? Let’s talk about it.
My Relationship With Colors
I’m not afraid or ashamed to admit that I hate bright/neon colors. To put it simply, they hurt my eyes, but so do extremely dark colors, especially when paired with other colors. That being said, I still year for some degree of color in my life, but most of my surroundings are dull or plain at best.
We’ve all had a favorite color, or multiple favorite colors that changed based on which way the wind was blowing, when we were younger. Some of us have favorite colors to this day, such as pastel pink and pastel blue for me. Regardless, it shouldn’t be a controversial opinion to say that we need color in our lives.
Let’s take my office in my parents’ house as an example. It used to be my older sister’s room back when she still lived with us, and she had, at one point, painted (albeit not completely) her walls a mix of a light pink and a shade of blue. Fast forward to 2020, and I decide to make her old room my new room, and then later my office, throwing out my bed and opting to sleep in the decade old queen sized mattress.
During the initial takeover process, I wanted to finish the paint job that my sister had started, but my dad said that we should just stick to one color, as trying to get just close to the original blue was going to be hard enough. Over the course of several, several days, possibly even a few weeks, I worked on repainting, with occasional help from my dad, every bit of the walls with that blue paint.
(Seriously, super thanks to my dad for helping me get the paint and getting me started in the beginning by helping out!)
To this day, I still quite enjoy that shade of blue that covers my walls, but it has since been covered by desks, cork-boards, and bookshelves that are various shades of a rather dark brown. I can’t even say that the objects that adorn these shelves are themselves colorful, as most books have covers that use dull or dark colors, further lessening the impact of the blue from the walls.
During this time, I’ve been trying to find a palette of colors that would work best with me.
What colors did I like?
If not specific colors, what about the intensity of the colors?
Since neon colors are too harsh for me, what about pastels?
Through the exploration of looking at the combinations of pastel colors, I found a love for the pastel versions of pink and blue. I’ve been on the fence about white as being one of my favorites, but the reality is that it’s super bright, being as it’s all colors at once, but, sadly, there is no real “pastel white.”
Bringing In Those Colors
There’s a whole conversation to be had regarding colors being fixed to gender roles and the price-hike on products branded as being “for women” that are just the exact same products sold to men, often called the “pink tax,” but that’s not a discussion for this blog post.
That being said, as I’ve come to terms with my gender identity, the more I have just naturally been attracted to that aforementioned pastel pink. It started with me picking out a coral pink Nintendo Switch Lite (which I would argue is not coral pink, but… whatever…) and then a sakura flower-patterned carrying case to go with it. I’ve chosen pink backgrounds for my websites (where I can do so) and my discord profile.
About a couple of updates ago, Mojang added Cherry Groves to Minecraft, which are filled Cherry Blossom trees, also known as sakura trees. I absolutely love the pink colored wood and the blocks they make! The college that I work at for my morning job has a gaming club, and they have a Minecraft server. I was given access to said server and spent a good couple hours looking for a cherry grove before an admin just gave me saplings to make my own biome.
Is There A Takeaway?
Ha ha.
No.
Since this is a blog about my life, and occasionally things that just float around in my head, we’re going to have posts that have no big conclusion or takeaway. I’ll still make them regardless because this is my blog.
Anyways, as the world becomes more and more colorless, I find myself trying to find new sources of color to inject into my life.
Kalli's Journal 