Sometimes being with your husband is getting dressed up and going out together for a romantic dinner. Sometimes, it’s spending a quiet evening in watching your favorite shows together. And sometimes, it’s getting decked out in camouflage and working a booth at the Arkansas Outdoors Expo.
Not exactly my scene. So how did I get there?
A few months ago, my husband started his own company. What started as a side project slowly evolved into SeeLite, LLC. His very own small business specializing in low amp draw, high lumen LED lights for hunting, fishing, off-roading and general outdoor use. And, by the way, I’m not regurgitating that information from a pamphlet or the company website. That is in my brain. That is how much I now know about his LED lights.
I really couldn’t have predicted this. Some would call it crazy. Some have. Not the starting a small business thing in addition to my husband’s day job as a power plant operator, mind you. No, I’m referring to me, in camo, at an outdoors expo, letting my usually reigned in southern accent roam free. And not just being there, oh no. But being there and conversing, quite knowledgably, about LED lighting, amps, volts, watts, lumens, installation, wiring, and battery life. Now, I am an engineer, so these concepts are not foreign to me. But I don’t find engineering fundamentals so fascinating that I spend a lot of my free time thinking about them. Quite the opposite actually.
I tend to seek balance between the mathematical/logical me and the creative/fashion blogger/artsy poser me. It’s why I learned to speak French and why I take community oil painting and tap dancing classes. It can’t all be pumps, valves, and equations. Not for me, anyway.
But for my husband, it is. I learned pretty early on in engineering school that there was a difference between people who could study and learn it, and people who were born with it. I was a study and learn it from books person, my husband was, and is, a natural-born engineer. He’s curious and inquisitive and loves learning how to do things for himself. I’m content to relax a read a book on the weekend. He’s content to weld in 110 degree heat or build a lamp we didn’t need.
And his tenacity is….inspiring. I’m in awe of it. So much in awe that I don camouflage and spend a whole weekend conversing fluently in hunter speak. It wasn’t something I ever saw myself doing but, I can’t help but want to be part of something that makes my husband so happy. I went into our marriage thinking that we have very different interests but it’s okay for a married couple to have their separate endeavors. But slowly, our interests have, by simple proximity, become somewhat mutual. I know the specifications for every light that SeeLite offers, and he has developed a taste for French macarons. We’re still pretty opposite people, but we’ve learned to fit together. I guess that happens when you really love someone. You educate yourself about the appropriate light spectrum for bowfishing in murky water and abandon your diet for a weekend of Expo food. And, as it turns out, barbeque nachos with jalapenos on top are pretty amazing.
-annieb, izdeefashion.com
