Reform

I put a little chatbox on my sidebar if any one wants to drop me a little line. I thought it could be a fun thing...

Yesterday I put on this outfit, but then I felt way too high maintenance and put on jeans and a t-shirt instead. Then I went for a four mile bike ride. It felt good. I hope to go again tomorrow.

shirt/vintage : tank/ross : skirt/vintage : shoes/minnetonka

The Clothes Horse was talking today about changing styles and what it all means...

I was thinking about personal style recently...to me, personal style is a reflection of the individual; it is a form of expression and a nonverbal communication to the world. That said, if our style becomes consistently the same, does that mean we are no longer progressing? If we claim that our style reflects us, then shouldn't it be in constant evolution because shouldn't we be in constant growth? Does this mean that personal style is not a state of being but rather a process? Can we describe our style in adjectives or should we be using verbs?

I too have been thinking about change and style and what it all means. After reading something in Mark Levin's book Liberty and Tyranny, I came to think about change in a different light. He said,

Change as reform was intended to preserve and improve the basic instructions of the state. Change as innovation was destructive as a radical departure from the past and the substitution of existing institutions of the state with potentially dangerous experiments.

There are different kinds of change. Change as reform, and change as innovation. I think sometimes people choose to change themselves completely and to the core, wiping away everything they used to be and reinventing themselves into someone different. But there's change as reform, which seems to me to be the natural way of growing up and discovering oneself. You are not the same as you were as a kid, but there are similarities there at the core of your person that are fundamental.

I'm different than I was as an elementary student, but I'm still extremely competitive and a tomboy at heart, just like that scrappy little girl was. And I'm not the same person I was in high school, but I'm still a gearhead and love with all my heart.

Sometimes I put on an outfit and look in the mirror and I just don't feel like me. I feel like wearing it I'm a different person, not just a reform of the original baby me born twenty two and three quarters years ago. When I was three, I would only wear dresses, when I was six I would only wear leggings, when I was ten I

would only wear sweatpants and baggy t-shirts, when I was sixteen I would only wear flare jeans and little boy t-shirts. I don't feel like I am trapped into one style anymore like I was when I was younger. Who knows though, maybe I'll look back and say, "When I was 22 I would only wear such-and-such."

This is from my last days at my old apartment I sure loved that place. I have mixed feelings about Spokane. It feels like home in some aspects and purgatory in others. Whenever I hear about Spokane or see pictures of it, it sparks this odd mixture of feelings inside me, very unsettling. Someday I hope my feelings about my old hometown will be simpler.