born a hundred thousand miles ago

As I was driving yesterday I started contemplating how I came about being who I am right this moment- why I feel so confident in who I am and why I, according to so many of you guys, am brave and such. I realized that a lot of it started with clothes, as silly as that sounds! I mean there were a lot of other factors, and I've always been pretty unfazed by doing things like this trip, but there are other areas in my life that I was definitely not as confident in and that has certainly changed over the past few years. I figured out that most of my confidence stemmed from ceasing to care about what other people thought about me, which started when I began to explore my personal style.

Back in high school I pretty much wore the same kind of thing everyday: boot cut/flare jeans, a little boys t-shirt, and skater shoes. I always had a desire to wear other things, and I loved dressing up for halloween and stuff like that, but I never wanted any stares or attention in regards to what I wore. Plus, it was high school, so I'm sure there was some sort of desire to fit in for the most part (though my high school class was awesome and there weren't really the popular/unpopular groups like a lot of kids have to deal with). And back in high school I wasn't super comfortable with my body. I didn't hate it, but had the typical desires to be less awkward, or more like the girls who had boyfriends, etc. But anyway, I digress...

So when I went to college, I dressed sort of the same for my freshman year, and then just started becoming friends with these amazing, beautiful, creative people and started really getting into my art department. Plus, I was living "on my own," if you count living in dorms, which I did at the time. I think maybe that gave me that jolt of confidence that I needed to branch out and try new things. Sophomore year I started wearing some different things. I remember thrifting two pairs of old men's pants that were awesome. I wore them a lot- I wish I had a picture of me in them. I don't know if they looked ridiculous or not, but I stopped caring. It didn't matter! Then I dyed a streak of my hair rainbow colors at the end of Sophomore year, and by the beginning of my Junior year I was wearing huge winged eyeliner and beehiving my hair like Amy Winehouse. At some point I also went through a phase where I dressed like David Lee Roth and teased my hair all huge like 80s hair bands. Hahah. It was awesome. That's around when I started my blog and I just began documenting my style and its evolution. I still have all those parts of my style- the rainbow hair, the Amy Winehouse/pinup girl, the 80's hair metal. They come out from time to time.

But all of that was to say that I think a lot of my confidence is rooted in not being afraid to wear whatever I want to and not caring about what other people will think of me. I mean, that's a daily thing and daily things are often the hardest to conquer. And once you stop caring, it just gets easier and easier to do and be who you want to be, rather than what other people want or expect you to be.

cardigan/target :: shirt/thrifted :: jeans/courtesy of Jessica Simpson :: shoes/minnetonka

On an exciting travel front- the Brave just hit an important milestone! The ol' girl hit 100,000 miles yesterday! Woohoo, little Brave! Kind of amazing, actually. I can't remember the milage when I bought her, but it was probably around... 8,000 miles ago. I feel like she needs some champagne or something! Maybe I'll take her to get an oil change, let the lady have some TLC. Haha. She deserves it!