Paint happy (or color as metaphor)

Does the furniture in your house ever talk to you?  Mine does.  And sometimes it says "Paint me."  My husband doesn't hear the voices.  But I tell him this is what happens when you leave me alone - I get into trouble.  Here's two pieces of trouble I got into recently...

First the mirror.  I don't know if this shade quite exactly captures what I was going for, but it's close.  You can see the "before" here.  Thanks y'all for the helpful feedback on color choices...

Because as you can see, I didn't shy away from the orangey tomato red - I just used it on my $2 dining room light fixture.  Does it look like a million bucks? Ahem.  No.  It looks like loads of cheery fun though!

Speaking of fun, these blasts of color have me feeling a little contemplative... Thinking about being "stuck in neutral".  In my house, I've been in neutral mode for awhile now, choosing shades of white, brown, grey, and black because they offered flexibility to change my style with the simplest switch of a throw pillow or artwork.  In other words, I was leaving my options open.  I was choosing not to choose.

After all "what is being in neutral"? It is a place from which you can move in any direction.  But you are not moving. You are stalled, watching the world go by.

When I saw this intense blue mirror suddenly on my wall, I stared at it like a foreign object.  What is this? And what is it doing here? It was as if I had stepped into someone else's house and not my own.  By choosing bright, urgent, undeniable color, I was taking a leap, making a commitment, breaking out of neutral gear.  It felt frightening, unfamiliar and thrilling all at once.  And most of all, it felt like a metaphor for the inner aspects of my life.