I call it my mid-life color crisis: the need to be surrounded by orange. It started five years ago, when my mother died. Her favorite color was orange; mine had been peach as a young girl. Similar to the scene in Star Wars, when Obi-Wan Kenobi dies and the force becomes stronger in Luke, I figure that when my mother passed away her love of orange made my peach intensify to a deep red-orange. I have 16 garments hanging in my closet that are orange. (I will not confess to how many scarves of the same hue I own.) In the world of color psychology, orange is considered an accessible happy color. It is a good fit for Whited Planning + Design.

As I was starting to type this sentence, I saw a small spider out of the corner of my eye – dangling from my hair.  I carefully picked the fuzzy fellow from my frizzy hair and found a spot on my messy desk where I gingerly placed him. My anecdote reveals two of my character traits: Number 1. I have cobwebs in my office. Number 2. I am not afraid of spiders. I have in fact always believed that spiders bring good luck, so I take the spider’s presence as a positive sign as I launch Whited Planning + Design. Spiders don’t have the ability to reinvent themselves; luckily, human beings do. Design allows us to reinvent ourselves; by changing our environment, we can change our behavior.