posh frock friday

During quarantine I've seen so many people say that they are wearing sweatpants or pajamas because they have nowhere to go and it's weird because "having nowhere to go" has kind of been my whole life for the last 15 years. I've been working from home since I was 17, and I don't really have much of a social life. (Okay I don't have ANY social life. I might as well be honest here lol!)

Taking outfit pictures has been a fun way to document my outfits even when the only person seeing them in person is my cat. I definitely could have spent most of my life in pajamas, but I haven't for a few reasons. First of all, I feel way way way less productive in pajamas. When I get dressed in the morning I feel like it's "time to work" and I get way more done. If I stay in pajamas it's just way too easy to crawl back into bed - especially easy when my office is just about fifteen paces away from my bedroom. I also just really enjoy clothes. I haven't wasted away my income on dresses so they can sit in my closet. I love wearing them, so I wear them! And lastly, this might be crazy but I feel like I don't appreciate how comfortable pajamas are unless I've been wearing real clothes all day. I love that moment before bedtime when I put on fresh jammies, and I don't think I'd enjoy it as much if I was just changing from one pair of pajamas into another lol!

Also honestly getting dressed has helped me feel like I have *some* control over something during Everything That's Going On. When I got really sick in 2017-2018 I lived in pajamas for a few months until I started to recover, and one of the things I was most looking forward to was wearing my pretty clothes again. It made me feel like my life was kind of normal again when I was finally able to ditch the elastic waistbands for fancy frocks. Every day that I get dressed and glide a thick black line across my eyelid, I've done something normal and executed a little bit of control over my life. It's such a small thing but honestly it makes a huge difference to me.

oh hi

March was the tenth anniversary of this blog, and the tenth anniversary of my first outfit post is rapidly approaching, on July 25th. And I've been thinking about Scathingly Brilliant an awful lot because of those two anniversaries.

Since my last post in December I cannot count how many times I thought "what was that recipe?" or "when did I go on that vacation?" or "what was Arrietty like when I first brought her home?" or "what did my bedroom look like in 2011?" and I hopped over to this blog, typed a keyword in the search bar, and boom! My own little search engine for the last ten years of my life.

During all this reminiscing I also happened upon this David Bowie video on youtube, and this quote has been ringing in my mind ever since, "Always remember that the reason you initially started working was that there was something inside yourself that you felt that if you could manifest it in some way you would understand more about yourself and how you coexist with the rest of society."

When I stopped blogging in December it was admittedly because I felt like nobody really read my blog anymore. If you know me, you know that my ego is as fragile as a broken eggshell and I avoid seeing things like follower counts, page views, likes, retweets, etc. like my life depends on it. I have somehow managed to totally avoid seeing how many instagram followers I have since 2018. Is there something pathologically wrong with the fact that I bought an ipod in order to login to my second instagram account so that I don't have to switch accounts within the app and see my follower counts? Definitely. I'm seeing a therapist, okay, lol. But the ignorance keeps me going. I hate this about myself so much, and I'm working on it, but that's just how I am.

Anyway so this is where the David Bowie quote comes in. In December I accidentally clicked on a page that showed me my dwindling blog stats, something I had managed to evade for a very long time, and I stopped blogging here. But that's not why I started! I'm such a dummy! 

In my second blog post here, on March 22, 2010, I wrote about my favorite songs. I was 23 years old and my favorite song was Lara's Theme from Doctor Zhivago. I was also obsessed with the Frank Sinatra song "Take Me" which I don't think I've listened to in at least 9 years. I'm listening to it right now and it's like a time machine to being 23 again.

How will I feel if ten years from now I want to know what my favorite song was (Dustland Fairytale by The Killers) or see what my room looked like in 2020? If I want to know my go-to recipe for smoothie bowls or to know what crazy new career I was interested in, but would predictably never follow through on. How would I remember what year I was obsessed with Seinfeld (2020) or what year I trademarked my own name (also 2020!) How would I know what month I learned to do my own acrylic nails (March 2020) and what month I completely gave up and took them off (May 2020.) Ten years from now how will I know how well I coped when my actual worst nightmare of a global outbreak came true (spoiler: not well.) I like having this record of my life - the ups and the downs, the pixies and the pink dos, the anxiety and jubilation and everything in between - and I don't want to totally abandon this little search engine.

So anyway.. I'm going to blog here now and then, mostly for me, but if anyone out there happens to be tagging along, it's for you too 💕