It feels soooo good to know I’m not alone over here engaging in high-risk style experiments, because usually I’m doing that anyway, so WELCOME TO MY WORLD. You are free to leave it once we’re no longer sheltering in place, but for now, I implore you to stay the course. If you’ve cut wispy bangs with a disposable razor, keep at it, maybe add some wisps along the perimeter. Don’t even use a different razor and I’m not kidding. If you’ve quit wearing eye makeup, or quit curling your hair or quit caring about any other thing that used to seem like a necessary trapping of your look but now ONLY NOW are you realizing it was exactly that, a trapping that kept you trapped, please keep not-doing what you’re newly not-doing. If you’ve launched a quest-beard then I know you already get this because you’re calling it a “quest beard” and I could not be happier that that’s a trending term. “Quest” is exactly what we’re on, style-wise. A quest only ends when you learn whatever the inner voice that demanded it wants you to learn, and if you stop now you simply won’t have enough data at the end of this to figure that out. And then you’ll be doomed to repeat the same experiment next time life gets weird.
This is definitely a law of nature and I got a sobering reminder of it when I switched up my #StayHomeMN uniform by wearing the one other pair of jeans I own, and a long-sleeved instead of a short-sleeved t-shirt. Sure enough, a few hours into the day I was vaguely pissy like you get when everybody said they’d go along with a thing but now nobody’s going along with it. I felt worried, despite that nothing personally worrisome was actually happening. I was weepy (as noted in a previous blog series I no longer have the benefit of PMS to legitimize routine weepiness). I was bored and cranky and the worst version of myself.
The mood plummet wasn’t about how I looked. I looked pretty much the same as in the original getup, i.e., absolutely exotic because jeans and t-shirts are not a thing I wear in regular life. But these different-than-the-previous-14-days-jeans and different-fitting t-shirt felt just different enough to signal my whole system for a gear-shift. It was as if I’d gotten my body and therefore my brain all ready for an all-new agenda, which turned out to be a cruel cruel joke, because it was day 14 of same-same-sameness. Fortunately I recognized this disparity and wrested myself from the liar-jeans and stupid long-sleeved t-shirt which honestly I’d never loved in the first place.
Back inside my unlaundered #StayHomeMN jeans and a now-standard short-sleeved t-shirt, the rest of the day went fine.
Judgment says, now we stay the course.
ann rosenquist fee 