Do I Want to "Deserve the Best"?

Source: Uploaded by user via Casie on Pinterest

For the last few months, I've been feeling increasingly overloaded by the amount of things that are on my current priorities list. Research work, general exam studies, relationships, friends, home chores, home improvement, fitness, food, hobbies, decluttering, personal style, savings/budgeting, and sleep/rest/downtime... I'd primarily been chalking up the increasing number of things on my plate to the notion of "adulthood"; I'm theoretically an adult, so there are just a lot of things I have to pay attention to as a responsible grown-up-person, right?

However, I've been doing some thinking recently about the effects of our cultural hymn to deserving "the best." Oprah encourages us to "live our best lives." Katy Perry sings, "Baby, you're a firework/Come on, show 'em what you're worth." We're all (hopefully) told we're worth absolutely the best. From many, many sources, I'm hearing that we all deserve a wonderful, amazing, happy life, with a fulfilling job and a beautiful house and a loving family. We can become more successful and happy and healthy and full of love for ourselves and the universe than we ever thought possible. Etc.

All right, so we deserve the best of everything. That has to be a good thing, right? BUT. You know where this message is frequently coming from? Those who would like to sell us the "best" things or experiences or lifestyles that we "deserve." Let's take L'Oreal:


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L'Oreal's slogan "Because you're worth it" is just brilliant as a marketing tool. It positions their products at the top of the line, tells you that you are a worthy and valuable person (absolutely!), and then implies that getting L'Oreal products is a celebration of your value!

And see, what I've lately been questioning is how much all of this insistence that we're worth having the best life possible along every axis also fosters the idea that what we have is BAD and NOT OKAY if it isn't the BEST. After all, not many people are making money out of convincing you that the lives we lead are perfect and wonderful exactly as they is. Instead, we certainly should never "settle." We're worth better. We deserve more! We deserve to buy L'Oreal, or the name-brand yogurt, or whatever it is that Oprah is suggesting in the magazine this month. (We deserve to buy Oprah's magazine so we can learn what items and behaviors we should be adding to our lives.) We deserve to have our perfectly-decorated and clean home, in which we spend time with our perfect partner when we're not at our perfect job. And if we don't have those things...the implication is that we should be working toward them, that we're absolutely capable of having them. And, if we're not, that we're settling for less than we "deserve." And that would be terrible, wouldn't it?

But what if some of those things actually don't need to become personal priorities? And what if the desire to get the "best" is stopping you from enjoying the "absolutely good enough"? Maybe it's okay to settle for a messy house that'll never grace a design blog. Or the person you love who loves you, even if it's possible that you could find someone even more compatible than he or she is. So for now, I'm attempting to figure out a bit more which things I really care about for myself, and which things I'm willing to let slide. I've unsubscribed, for now, to a few blogs that were perpetuating the idea of "look how beautiful my life ought to be!" (Bye bye, Apartment Therapy!) I'm going to try to look more at my notion of what it takes to be a "responsible adult" and see what isn't necessarily accurate. I think it's also worth looking at how much social influence is defining what I'm calling "best." Maybe it should be more like this, where what I choose becomes the definition of my "best":

Source: google.com.au via Shwu on Pinterest

What do you all think about this? It's hard to argue that striving for the best isn't always a good thing...but I do think there's something to the notion of choosing areas where it's actually fine (even good) to decide to "settle." Do you find the notion of "living your best life" inspiring or frustrating or somewhere in between?

Everybody Everywear: Pink and Red

Today, for Valentine's Day, the EverybodyEverywear challenge is to wear red and pink outfits. I haven't done an EverybodyEverywear day for a while, but actually remembered to jump in on this one! Tricky, though, because I realize that I don't actually own a lot of pink. Pale pink is one of my least favorite colors (and pastels don't look great on me in general), and I seem not to have any hot pinks...so this pink skirt was one of my few options. (Also, red and pink has always been one of those combinations that I feel is a "holiday" matchup...like black and orange or red and green. I guess it's appropriate today, though!)


I've been having a fairly quiet day...the boyfriend and I had dinner at home and are settling into our general Tuesday night TV routine. We chose to go out to a nice dinner last weekend instead, since I always prefer not trying to go out to eat along with every other couple in the world. If you're celebrating Valentine's Day, hope you're having a lovely one (even if you're not celebrating, hope you had a nice day)!

Creative Fabric Project

Today I was in a mini fashion-show-of-a-kind for everyone who participated in a January workshop on creative uses of fabric and patternmaking, so I thought I'd share my final project here. Most of us spent the three-day workshop learning how to make a particular skirt from Tokomo Nakamichi's book Pattern Magic. Nakamichi's pattern-making process was really inspiring to me, particularly in the way that she encourages prototyping sculptural, 3D patterns with paper and then recutting the paper to form new pattern pieces. The skirt pattern we were working from used the same technique as Nakamichi used in this dress, the otoshiana (or "drop-hole").


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So I set out to make a skirt with a drop-hole. I constructed it out of denim, since I needed something sturdy to hold the shape of the skirt and that was the heaviest material I had in my stash. While I've sewn clothing from patterns before, this was the first time that I ever drafted a pattern (given only the dimensions in a book), altered it to fit me, and turned it into a wearable garment. A really good learning experience, I think!

And then...well, the drop-hole in the skirt looked to me liked it needed to have something coming out of it. So I added a speaker cone in the hole, and a pocket to hold a little amplifier circuit, batteries, and an mp3 player. So now I have a skirt that can also play music. (A very, very heavy skirt, because of the weight of the speaker). A bit silly, perhaps, but it was a fun project!

Reflections on NaBloPoMo

Source: Gekokujyo on Flickr

I wanted to take the last post of January to reflect a little on my experience participating in Blogher's National Blog Post Month. I published 27 posts this month, including this one, which is certainly a LOT more frequently than I've ever written in that time frame on this little blog. I feel it was a good exercise for me; I enjoy routines, and I find it's much easier for me to find time for things that are scheduled into my daily or weekly routines. I'm realizing this month the importance of establishing such routines, to make sure that I'm prioritizing the process of taking regular time to do things I find of value.

Something else that I think is nice about the frequent posting was getting a record of much of what I wore this month, and a little bit of a journal-like record of my month. I've often enjoyed going back in my blog archives, seeing how my style changes or remains constant and reminding myself of what I was doing during those months. I used to be a frequent journal-writer...between the time I was about 9 and 18 I wrote a page or two in a journal every night before bed. (In college, I chose to spend more of my precious bits of free time with friends and my boyfriend, rather than with my journal). There's still something that I find incredibly valuable personally about having any kind of record of what I was doing, thinking, and experiencing.

However, one thing that I felt was missing from this blog-writing marathon was the time to take a few days to develop well-articulated, more thoughtful posts. Given the generally limited amount of time every day that I choose to devote to my blogging activities, the post-per-day frequency generally meant that my posts were shorter and less carefully researched or structured. I didn't find the regular writing generally difficult (except the few days I wasn't available until late in the evening), but I also chose to write in ways that were easier to me. Perhaps I could have taken advantage of the NaBloPoMo discussion topics to spark some more variety in what I wrote about.

I'm not intending to join the NaBloPoMo group for February, but may pick it back up again at some point this year. It's been an interesting experience! For the time being, perhaps I'll try having a more-regular-though-not-daily posting schedule and see how that works with the other aspects of my life.

If you have a blog, do you post everyday/nearly everyday, on a less frequent schedule, or only sporadically? How come?

Another Installment of "Making Things Shorter"

Yesterday's refashioned jean skirt wasn't the only item being refashioned...where "refashioned" seems to mean "hemmed significantly shorter." I'd thrifted this dress ages ago, loving the purple shade and the velvet, but didn't end up wearing it because the overall effect was just too much purple velvet for me, and a bit too shapeless. I haven't yet found the proportions that work really well for me with long skirts/dresses...I used to wear velvet hippie maxi skirts all the time in college, but haven't managed to integrate them into my graduate school style easily.


With a cut and re-hem, this is now a great winter dress! (With tights, of course. Wouldn't dare wear this out in Boston on a winter day without them. Maybe two pairs of tights, depending on how cold it was.)



Somehow the weekend went quickly and brought around Monday again! This should be a busy week; a couple of lab projects getting into full swing, along with a mini fashion show for the sewing class that I took over January. I'll have to share some pictures of the skirt I made, once I get them! Any exciting plans for anyone this week?

Simple Sunday Refashion

I'd show you another blazer outfit today, but I barely went out of the house except to go to the gym...I did wear my tan corduroy blazer when I went to the supermarket, but didn't get a photo. I spent today primarily doing some cleaning and decluttering (the desk is...mostly...straightened up). I also dug into my refashioning bin. I really want to start actually refashioning the pieces that are worth my time and putting those that aren't into the Goodwill bin; there's only so much time that I have for projects!

One refashioning project I worked on today was this skirt. (I'm not entirely sure why I'd thrifted this in the first place.) I've been wanting a high-waisted jean skirt for the spring, and this had some potential...but what's going on with the awkward length and big slit up the front?


This wasn't a hard fix, though. I just cut it shorter, up to the level of the slit, and re-hemmed it. Now I have my new high-waisted skirt!


So it's time for spring to arrive now, right? Right?

Also, as I said earlier in the week...here's a linkup for anyone who's interested in sharing some of their favorite blazer outfits. Would love to see how you all have been styling your blazers!

Blazer Challenge #5 and FBFF on Trends

(Well, I was going to post this yesterday. And then I was out for dinner with family, and it got very late...so. How's everyone's weekend going?)

Fashion Beauty Friend Friday is the creation of Katy of ModlyChic, and currently takes the form of a monthly set of questions for bloggers to explore on a particular Friday. If you're interested in others' answers, Katy's linkup can be found here

1. With Fashion week just around the corner, we are all beginning to focus on the upcoming trends for fall. But what about the trends hitting stores now? What are you coveting?

Hmm, I suppose all the stores are already into spring clothing, aren't they? Spring currently feels far away from the cold rainy January we're having (if it still mostly feels like fall and not winter, spring must still be months and months from now, right?). Right, spring trends. I'm looking forward to experimenting more with bold color-blocking, get out of my one-color-plus-neutral-colors tendencies:

Colorblocking by elnajay

Bold graphical prints are also supposed to be "trendy" this spring, which is great for me because I have a handful of beautiful print dresses, including two Catherine Ogust dresses that I absolutely love (though am surprised they haven't made it on the blog, yet)!

My dresses, both thrifted at different times and different places, are like this one on Ebay:


2. How do you incorporate new trends into your wardrobe?

Generally I bring in new trends via thrift stores...realistically, there are very, very few "new trends" these days that haven't been trendy at some point in the past as well (whether in the last few years or decades ago). So it's usually possible for me to find things at the thrift stores cheaply to try out a new trend and see how it works with my personal style. Sometimes items need a little updating (the print is trendy but the long length too dated), but there's generally inspiration for a low price!

3. What trend are you seeing and not loving?

I know that pastel colors come back every spring, but I also know they're not going to be finding too much of a home in my closet. Pale colors never look as good on me as saturated shades and darker colors.

Also, crop tops/bra tops are exceedingly far away from my style. I'm not even sure where one could wear such an outfit, except to the beach or at home...

4. Do you feel the pressure to constantly update your closet with the latest trends?

Not really. As someone who follows a number of fashion/style blogs, I'm certainly much more aware of trends than I used to be. Sometimes I get drawn to styles and start becoming more aware of them when I browse the thrift store, but I don't feel like I need to.

5. Where do you find inspiration that takes the trend and makes it accessible to you and your personal taste?

Mostly from blogs, but also from people I see around the city...I love looking at what everyone wears on the subway!

I also wanted to share my fifth blazer challenge outfit...this one paired together two of my favorite pieces, the dress and the velvet blazer. This is one blazer I didn't thrift recently...I got it at Forever 21 at least 6 or 7 years ago, and have worn it fairly regularly since. Velvet is definitely one of my favorite fabrics, especially this silky-soft one!



I'll post a linkup tomorrow for anyone who wants to share a favorite blazer outfit!