pondering on company time

PISCES, September 23, 2008

Limited? Restricted? Confined? Constrained? There is, of course, a credit crunch going on. And the Large Hadron Collider has temporarily stopped working, which may be slowing the universe down a little too. And then, of course, there's all the usual turmoil which you tend to find yourself experiencing around this time of year. But you're not stuck and even if they are limited, you do have choices. And some of these are surprisingly attractive. Stop seeing reasons to stay stuck in a rut. Be bold. Move on.

Hmmmm....this is a good one. Over the weekend we made some pretty major progress on our house. Kimchi's bedroom is painted. Jeff finally installed some of our lighting and we made a list for our trip to IKEA this weekend that includes new bedroom furniture. For us, not him. He gets our old stuff. Sorry kid. Anyway, I decided to spend a good deal of time cleaning out closets and old boxes of clothes. Normally when I do this, I drag all this crap out, try stuff on and declare that it's all cute and what the hell is my problem that I haven't' worn it. Then it goes into my drawers and closet where it continues to sit, unworn, until I do this again. Well, I decided that I was done with that. I'm not sure what's going on in the squidgy mass of my brain, but I've been feeling very self-discovery-ish lately and I'm trying to make strides in my life to become who I want to be. Sadly, I found inspiration for this in an American Express commercial with Diane Von Furstenburg. I love her for her wrap dress that I covet but sadly do not have the proper shape to wear and NO, not everyone looks good in a wrap dress contrary to popular belief, but I also love her for this quote:

"I didn't really know what I wanted to do, but I knew the woman I wanted to become."

This is my new mantra. Well, it's my only mantra but whatevs. I relate a lot of my life through clothing. I love clothes. I always have and most of my childhood memories involve what I was wearing or wanted to wear. In fact, my first childhood aspiration was to become a very famous fashion designer. Clearly, that worked out well. Anyway, I decided that step one of this process of change was for me to rid myself of the old, and in this case, it was old clothes. I was brutal. If I hadn't worn it in the last 6 months, it was gone. The only exceptions I made were for coats and special occasion stuff but even those were done under major scrutiny. I know they're only clothes, but they represent a phase in my life that I'm ready to move away from and it opens the door for me to incorporate new things that reflect who I want to be (in my head, anyway). It's a very liberating feeling to remove all the excess from your life. Normally I feel sad to let go of things that hold any kind of memories, hence the clutter in my house, but I don't feel that way anymore. It's just stuff. The memories are in my head. Maybe it's because we're gearing up to become parents that I feel this way but it's good. I've just decided that I'm not going to harbor any more shit that doesn't make my life better or happier. Clothes, people, general crap....why keep around the stuff that makes it harder, you know? I don't know. This all probably makes more sense with a delicious glass of white Lambrusco.

See, with all this philosophizing, I just saved you the time it would have taken to watch Oprah. You're welcome.