OOTD: What I'm Not Thankful For

I am thankful for so much. I am also pointedly not thankful for some of the things in my life.
Whenever I'm confronted with something inconvenient or difficult for me, my initial reaction is to be bitter and/or feel sorry for myself. Unfortunately, neither of those emotions help me or the situation.
It's important to acknowledge and validate my initial emotional reactions, but I don't need to give them any more power than they deserve. This is easier said than done, but it's true nonetheless.

My parents always told me that if I don't like something, instead of moping or whining about it, I should change it. Problem-solving is a useful tool to use when confronted with something that makes life more difficult, but it's not the only tool. Accepting that which you do not like is important both in situations when you can make a change and when you can't. 

When you can change what you don't like in your life, acceptance is the first step to acknowledging something is off in your life. From there, you can truly address the problem head-on.
When you can't change what you don't like in your life or the changes you can make are slow to take effect, acceptance can help you go through life without being bogged down.

When my therapist first started talking to me about acceptance, I had a hard time accepting (lol) this as a method for dealing with things that make my life harder. For one, it sounds like it means you have to invalidate your emotions. For another, it sounds a lot like giving up.
True acceptance is neither invalidating nor giving up. Society often preaches ignorance disguised as acceptance, but that is not true acceptance. True acceptance does not mean ignoring your feelings or the problem. It means openly acknowledging and validating your feelings, being honest about the problem, and accepting the reality of the situation. From there, you can start to live without being weighed down by the misery of a problem you can neither solve nor, in your mind, live with.

This was supposed to be my Thanksgiving week post. The Monday before Thanksgiving, however, I was put into a really difficult situation with the lease on my apartment. What it boiled down to was that I would need to move out the week of December 1st, a full month before I was expecting to have to move out. I'd been leisurely looking for roommates and apartments under the impression that I had until the end of my lease at the end of December, but I hadn't even so much as arranged to meet anyone or see anything yet. I felt scared, angry, and hopeless at the prospect of having to move out in 12 days without anywhere to go.

Luckily, this was a difficult situation I could change. I could (and did) look at a number of apartments before the real estate offices closed for Thanksgiving. I could (and did) arrange a fall-back option if I couldn't find a place to sign a lease. But before I could do any of those things, I had to stop wasting all my energy by thinking about how I didn't want to leave my apartment, how I wasn't ready to look for places, that I was scared I wouldn't have enough time to find the right place or the right roommates, that I was angry I had to do any of this in the first place. I had to accept the situation I was in so I had the energy and mindset to be able to find myself (and Luxe) a place to live. Even though I didn't want to, I had to move, and I had to move soon. Accepting that made it so much easier for me to look for a place in a time crunch and start packing up to move with so little time.

Acceptance is a tool I'm still working on. However, it's something I feel content to put the energy into, because it's a tool that really helps me so often.

This belt was provided by Top Tier Style. If you would like to purchase your own, use the coupon code BLOG15 for 15% OFF everything on their store!

OOTD: On Growth

*TW* Depression, anxiety, and other themes of mental health.

Last week, my therapist told me that the goal of life isn't to be perfect: it's to grow. This makes sense, and it isn't the first time I've heard it. No one can be perfect, and denying this makes making progress harder. It's hard to work when your goal is objectively unattainable. At the same time, though, this statement hit a little too hard. I've spent my whole life trying to be the best. What am I supposed to work towards if not perfection?

Dealing with depression and anxiety as an analytical person is interesting, because my emotion and reasonable mind are both regularly functioning on high and are often in conflict with each other. My emotion mind screams that I cannot possibly solve any given problem, and that there's no point in even trying because I was miserable before this problem arose and I'll likely be miserable even if I solve the problem. My reasonable mind overcompensates, telling me that I can solve every single issue I'm faced with, so long as I do everything right.

This is how I've tried to address everything in my life for as long as I can remember. Doing everything right, though, is exhausting. Sure, I'm taking good care of myself – I see my therapist weekly, my general practitioner regularly, I get in 30 minutes of exercise a day, I've cut back on sugars and added vegetables to my daily diet, I stretch every day, and I walk around with the most pertinent pages of my DBT handbook to deal with emergencies. But good is not perfection. I don't eat enough potassium, I could exercise more strenuously, I could eat plain oatmeal instead of adding brown sugar, I spend too much time in bed, and the other day, someone told me that I should go gluten-free if I wanted my depressive symptoms to ease up. In my mind, then, it doesn't matter that I'm doing better than I was a couple years ago: I'm not "cured" because I'm still not doing everything right.

And that's just to mention the things I know about that I could be doing better. Another key part of solving problems is being armed with knowledge. I am a firm believer that the more you know, the better you can do. I mean, I have a degree in psychology partially because I wanted to know everything about how to make myself "better" after being diagnosed with depression at age 15. Knowledge is a valuable power, but it's not the only power out there. 

After all, no one can know everything. Neither can you act on everything, as so much of what humanity knows is conflicting. So, striving toward knowing everything and behaving perfectly is inherently a doomed mission, certain only to create failure and self-doubt.

By no measure do I consider myself near perfection. I'm simply so obsessed with obtaining perfection in every aspect of my life that the growth I have made seems embarrassing when compared to my goal. I am so obsessed with obtaining perfection that, no matter what I do, I find myself trying to figure out how I could have done better, and how I'll do better next time. I am committed to growing and becoming a better person, more than I am committed to anything in life. Part of being a better person, I think, means being realistic and accepting of one's flaws and missteps. Plus, over-analyzing everything I do takes time away from actually living life. 

I'm not sure how to end this blog post because I'm still trying to figure out what I'm working towards if I'm not working to be the best. So, I'll end by saying that I've been waiting since the spring to wear this outfit with my denim jacket for the blog. It's the middle of October, but on the day my friend Sydney took photos of me, it was still too hot for a jacket. I'm going to post these pictures without thinking of how I should have worn this outfit another day or powered through and worn the jacket anyways. 

OOTD: On Second Glance

I've written a lot of posts about cycling items through your closet quickly and efficiently. Part of it is that I've moved 7 times in the last 4 years, so I've gone through my clothes fairly consistently since becoming an adult. Part of it is also that I only have the room and budget for a finite amount of clothing, so I really quickly buy and resell a lot of my wardrobe at thrift stores. If I don't wear it, I don't keep it.

I haven't often talked about the merits of keeping something you don't wear. Since moving here, I've found myself looking at old pictures, annoyed that I didn't keep this sweater or this skirt or this dress. I have less storage space here than I've had since I lived in a dorm room, so I've been going through my clothing regularly to take stuff to Crossroads to resell. Every time something sells at Crossroads, on Poshmark, or on Depop, I find myself worrying that I'm going to end up missing that item at some point down the road.

So, I've started experimenting with keeping some clothing that I haven't worn in a long time. This mostly means keeping some special pieces that don't fit me anymore, like these pants or these pants.

I actually totally unintentionally kept this dress despite not having worn it in over a year. I have a LOT of black dresses, and I guess this one just got lost in the mix. It wasn't until I was going through my entire closet this summer, trying to figure out my summer wardrobe, that I noticed it and reimagined wearing it in a new way.

I've owned this belt since I was in high school and this necklace since freshman year of college. You can't see in the photos, but the top is sheer, so I paired it with a bralette that I've had since freshman year of college that I'd kept in the hope that it would eventually fit again (thanks, past Hannah!). I hadn't worn this dress in a long time because it was a little baggy on me and I didn't like wearing a tank top under it to make it school appropriate. With a couple old accessories, though, I was able to wear the dress as a whole new look.

I walk the same route with my dog every day, twice a day. I've walked by this gorgeously growing building every day since I moved here. I've probably looked at it a couple dozen times, but I never really thought anything of it until a particularly sunny day a couple weeks ago. I was immediately drawn to the plants lining the stairs and fence. I thought it only appropriate to pair an outfit I'd once glazed over with a background I'd once done the same thing with.

OOTD: In Praise of the Outfit Repeater

Photography by Cassidy Hopkins

Alright, let's be real: who among us has NOT re-worn their favorite outfit (or outfits)? After all, if you love something, why not indulge in it more than once? That's how I feel about these striped pants and white crop top.

Maybe it's just that "The Lizzie McGuire Movie" had a huge effect on my childhood, but I've long operated under the assumption that wearing an outfit (or even a special piece) more than once is ~against the rules~.

This moment shaped my approach toward fashion more than I care to admit.

For the most part, striving to not re-wear the same outfit pushes me to be creative with my wardrobe. I love mixing and matching everything I own to create something new every day. There are, however, a number of reasons to re-wear your favorite outfit.

Sometimes, you buy a piece that only goes with one other thing in your closet. As you might imagine, these pants are a bit tricky to match with. Not only is the pattern a little daunting, but the thin fabric makes it hard to tuck a shirt into them, a trick I rely heavily upon. This shirt is one of the only things I own that works well with these pants.

I also tend to outfit repeat when I know I'm going to be seen by different people each time I wear the outfit. I wore this outfit first to work, then on a weekend outing with friends, and finally on a casual date. Each time I wore the outfit, someone was seeing it for the first time. In their eyes, I wasn't really outfit repeating.

Finally (and this is the most important argument in my case for outfit repeating), you should re-wear an outfit if and whenever you damn well please. Do you like the outfit? Yes? Great, then wear it as often as you'd like. Clothing serves a number of functions: to express ourselves, to cover our naked bodies, to signal belonging to a specific social group, etc. The most important function clothing serves is to please ourselves. If you like it, wear it. If you really like it, keep wearing it.

Someone recently told me about a coworker of theirs who, in an experiment to test peoples' awareness, wore the same outfit every day for a week. By the end of the week, they were still receiving compliments from the rest of the office, even though theoretically they'd seen the dress every day for five days. People are generally too unobservant to care that you've worn the same outfit multiple times, or even multiple days in a row. Just wear whatever makes you feel your best.

OOTD: The Wonder of Color

Photography by Cassidy Hopkins

Here's a (not-so-secret) confession: I'm not big on wearing colors. I used to totally rock bright colors in high school, but as I've gotten older my closet has turned to neutrals and pastels. It doesn't help that I've spent the last 4 years living in Seattle and New York, where wearing all-black is part of the lifestyle. Every now and then, though, I find a colorful piece that I just have to have. This dress is one of those pieces.

I bought this dress when I was going through my comfy body-con dress phase. I was drawn to the style more than the color, and told myself I'd wear this dress when I felt like standing out.

And, for a while, I did. Once I dyed my hair, though, wearing colors got that much harder. If I wanted to stand out, I'd go for a daring lipstick or a uniquely designed piece. After all, if a red dress is too much for me, pairing a red dress with my blue hair is definitely too much.

When Cassidy, Tomi and I decided to go to Coney Island last Saturday, Cassidy (the most experienced New Yorker of the bunch) said we should wear bright colors to match the colorful rides in the background. I found myself staring blankly at my clothing rack. This dress is the only colorful piece I own, and I've been waiting until my blue hair grows out to wear it. "I'll just wear white," I decided.

At the last minute, I threw this dress into my backpack on my way to meet Cassidy and Tomi. It's been years since I wore it in a blog post, and goodness knows I have to make the most out of my wardrobe when it comes to dressing for OOTD posts. I figured I'd throw my hair in a bun so the blue wouldn't clash with the red.

I really surprised myself when I looked in the mirror and liked seeing myself in all this color. Not only did I look great, but I still looked like myself. Usually when I try a trend I'm not naturally drawn towards, I don't feel authentic. One of the most important aspects of my sense of style is being true to myself and portraying myself the way I feel, not just the way others see me as a fashion blogger. I'm glad I tried something new, and I'm glad I truly committed to the look. Plus, these colors ended up matching the ferris island on Coney Island, which is pretty ideal.

Now that I'm back in the land of shades of gray (literally), I'm content to let this red dress hang untouched on my clothing rack. It's nice to know, though, that I can totally pull it off if and when I so choose.

OOTD: Grad Announcements

So, I know I already graduated... But I'm back for more. My college only has one commencement ceremony a year, so I'm headed back to Seattle in June to walk with the rest of my class. I already have my diploma and an internship, so I'm feeling pretty good for someone who doesn't walk the stage for another month.

Seeing as I'm not in Seattle, throwing together photos for my grad announcements took a little more effort. My cap and gown are waiting for me in Seattle, so I borrowed my friend Corina's for the weekend. I wouldn't be able to take pictures on campus, so I leaned into my status as a New York resident. You can see the Manhattan skyline from my roof (including the Empire State Building), so I took my pictures up there to highlight where I'm at right now.

Of COURSE Luxe got in on my graduation shoot! She accompanied me to all of my classes sophomore-junior year, so she's pretty much an honorary graduate.

ConGRADulations to all my fellow graduates from the class of 2017!

OOTD: Spring Layers

Before I moved here, I was so excited for spring in NYC. Blossoming trees and flowers! Walking my dog through Central Park! Finally putting my winter coats away! Spoiler alert: spring in NYC doesn't exist. It's nearly May and there have been a grand total of 7 nice days so far in 2017. I even had to drag one of my winter coats out last week. It was incredibly soul-crushing.

This spring, I've been relying on layers almost every day. This outfit has a grand total of 4 layers, not including the sweater I packed in my sister's backpack. The trickiest part about layering is doing it without all the wrinkles and bulges. My trick there is to layer thin, relatively well-fitting pieces. You'll still get a little bit of a bulge where everything meets, but it's not so bad.