Turn Casual Friday Up To Eleven

 

photo credit: Joshua Franzos

You've heard the aphorism, "If you don't like the scenery, change your view"? What about, "If you don't like what's being said, change the conversation"? Or maybe, "If you don't like how the table is set, turn over the table"? I'm pretty angsty these days, so I prefer the last one.

photo credit: Joshua Franzos

If you tuned in to my last blog post (here) you'll know that I've been dealing with some health issues. I'm only very slowly getting back to my "regularly scheduled programming." Actually that's not true. Nothing is regularly scheduled anymore. I liked my routines. I liked getting up at 5:15am and cycling or running or picking up weights until I was good and mentally chill for the rest of the day. I liked sitting down to write during lunch. I liked having a drink, or few, with my husband and some friends at the end of the day, and then writing some more if I was able. This is what my muse, the writing inspiration and task master in my head, wanted. He's looks a bit like Raoul Duke, but has a tendency to become a Pterodactyl clawing around the inside of my skull if I don't get the exercise, writing, socializing, and drinking done. Because this schedule worked for him, it worked for me. Turns out, it's not working for me and I need to take better care of myself. Eat more healthy fats. Do womanly well being things. I'm learning, but honestly, I'd much rather take an upper-cut to the chin than do oogy-woogy, crunchy things that reek of "balance your hormones, balance your life" and "nurture your stomach, nurture your soul." 

This stuff, it's not for me. I'd much rather run with the wolves.

"That's just too damn bad," says the Universe, "listen, if you want to be healthy enough to finish your first draft before October, you're going to have to be more tender. Oh, and start taking those fish oil and evening primrose capsules!"

 Fine! I shout, like an angry teenager, slamming the front door for extra emphasis. Stupid Universe. My muse flaps around inside my skull like a rabid bat. He shrieks in agreement. Stupid Universe.

photo credit: Joshua Franzos

photo credit: Joshua Franzos

photo credit: Joshua Franzos

As I very, very slowly inched around my neighborhood on my daily very, very slow constitutional with a pissed muse and angry why me? thoughts skittering around in my head, I kept walking by the J.Crew store on Walnut Street. Before long, I became haunted by a very pink, very floral shirt in the window display. It stuck out. It was SO pink. After about two weeks of staring at it from the outside in, I went inside to see what it was about. I haven't purchased any new "work shirts" in a few years, so, what was the harm? The sales associate informed me that the shirt was sold out, except for the one in the window display. Oh well, I shrugged and started walking out, but, as you know, I walk very, very slowly these days. The sales associate pulled it off the mannequin and handed it to me before I made it to the door. What was the harm? I tried it on. It fit and I liked it. I liked a pink, floral shirt and I bought it.

 

photo credit: Joshua Franzos

photo credit: Joshua Franzos

photo credit: Joshua Franzos

Since I started writing, it has made me a little singularly focused. On words. On writing. On when l'll get to write next. I lost sight on how creative I could be in other avenues that I used to enjoy. I'm thinking food and fashion specifically. Even further specifically, I forgot how much I enjoy the challenge of mixing prints. Since I got this shirt with work in mind, I came up with a punchy casual Friday look and it went over very well. My colleagues were very enthusiastic. (I have a tendency to get into what I call my "Mr. Roger's rut" in the winter...button down shirt, cardigan, trousers, repeat. I shake out of it every spring). "Just trying to look better than I feel, " I quipped at the water cooler.

 I mixed the shirt with pinstripe denim, a leopard print belt, metallic gold flats ( no heels right now), and a Marsala-colored snakeskin clutch (I'm not supposed to carry heavy bags right now). It seems like a lot of different things that miraculously work together, but I have a few tips to share on the subject of mixing prints that I'd like to share with you now and in other posts this spring and summer. My first tip is: leopard and metallics should be used like neutrals (you know, black, white, tan), and they always look great when paired with pop-y colors like fluorescents...like hot pink. 

photo credit: Joshua Franzos

I never wear pink. I never wear floral anything. I never talk about clothes on my blog. Now I am.  A wolf in pink clothing.

I guess if even cowgirls get the blues, even tomboys can get the pinks...my way of wearing rose-colored glasses, I guess. 

So with that, consider the table overturned... I used my jedi mind powers since I can't physically overturn it myself right now. But I will again, soon as I'm done with physical therapy.

(Take that universe).

photo credit: Joshua Franzos

What I wore:

shirt: J.Crew

necklace: vintage Goldette, my mother's

watch: vintage Omega, my mother's

pants: Anna Sui original sample, Spring 2002

belt: past season Express

shoes: past season J.Crew

bag: vintage 

Sunnies: vintage Christian Dior

Do you ever use fashion or colors to change your mindset or alter your mood? Tell me all about it in the comments below!

Your Bosom Friend in Pittsburgh,

Follow my blog with Bloglovin

Cause and Effect

I've been preoccupied. Too busy to fashion blog. I saved a newborn elephant while a hungry lion mauled his mother. I slung all 200lbs of him over my shoulders like a shepherdess, and carried him a short distance to safety. His little trunk bopped me on the head as he fought me. He wanted me to take him back to mom. Mom was gone, a giant red splotch on the golden safari. I threw my back out, fighting the cruel mistress that is mother nature.

That was sad and a lie. I'm sorry. It's just. Well. I've been having LBP, (that's internet abv for Lower Back Pain) going on three weeks now. Some of it was very bad. Bad enough to keep me from work for five and half days. I'm going a little stir crazy.

"Oooooh, what did you do?" people ask, irises dancing, looking for a medical cautionary tale replete with cause and effect. How can they avoid pain and suffering? 
I really wish I could give them what they want, instead I tell them, "Dunno, I woke up one day and my back was shitty." 
Life doesn't work like a morality tale. Truth. 


More truth. The cause. Four medical professionals have all agreed that the sacroiliac joint seems to be my culprit. The effect. The painful inflammation in my lower back spread to the front of my pelvis and my hips locked up. When I wasn't laying on my back, contemplating the merits of the ceiling, I had to crawl on all fours to make my way to the bathroom--I even kept myself dehydrated to limit these nature calls. When I absolutely had to walk (from the house to the car, to the car to the doctor's office, or when my tough-loving husband (who's recovered from back surgery and knows first hand that not walking, is far worse in the long haul, than the pain of walking) made me walk around the block once a day)...I moved slower than I thought humanly possible. Hunched like Quasimodo, I took a one inch step with one foot and repeated it with the other foot, until I reached my destination--a million light years later. The whole time, tears involuntarily sprung out of my eyeballs from the pain. Hooo boy, was my sacroiliac joint pissed, but not as pissed as I was. Nobody makes me cry my own tears. Nobody. 

I've never really known physical pain. At routine wellness check-ups, nurses always ask, "on a scale of 0-10. Zero being no pain at all and ten, being the most pain imaginable...How are you feeling today?"

I always pictured a big, red dragon with black eyes, holding a struggling person in its claw while it bends its giant head down and rips the human in half with its teeth. That's my standard for a ten. The most pain I could possibly imagine.

"zero," I've answered, to pretty much a lifetime of those wellness questions.

I had my wisdom teeth out when I was twenty. Even then, post extraction, when the local anesthesia wore off...I think I'd say I was sitting at a solid 4. I've been real lucky until a week ago, a 9, thank you.


My pain has not been managed very well and I find that I have room to be both angry and grateful that it wasn't magically whisked away with modern pharmacology. I am angry that I haven't been writing, that I couldn't write, that writing continues to be physically challenging. I am angry that pain is real and mind over matter is in fact, bullshit. Strange though it may sound, I am grateful to finally know what real debilitating pain is like,  didn't even have to walk a mile in someone else's shoes to look upon the world with brand new eyes. But instead of meeting people's eyes on the street, and letting them see my pain and embarrassment, I stared at my shuffling feet or at the plaster swirls on my bedroom ceiling...a disconcerting mixture of figure eights, half moons and angry swipes with a plaster trowel. Why?

My current diagnosis and prognosis offers me no comfort or direction. My LBP seems to be in tune with the normal fluctuation of hormones during a woman's menstrual cycle. I might feel like this once a month, or I might not. Hard to predict, the doctor shrugs. Sometimes medicine seems more like an art than a science. I missed the pain killer boon by about ten years. I would definitely say that I'm missing it, especially now that we're in the midst of a knee jerk reaction to it. Lucky me. I had to push hard to get prescribed anything, but ask and you shall receive. I was prescribed an anti-depressant for my back. It wasn't that long ago, (1600's) where pain was thought to be a punishment from God and the course of treatment was prayer. It seems pain is a spiritual problem again and cast into the pit of other medical undesirables, mental health. Depressed? Shh! Good God, stop talking about it! You think there's time in our medical system to get to the bottom of that? Here's a script for anti-depressants. You'll feel comfortably numb. I've looked for God amongst the plaster swirls on the ceiling and in between the carpet fibers on the stairs as I inched down them. I clutched the bottle of pills in my hand, they shook like a rattle on each step. God and mother nature, they're harsh mistresses.  I threw the anti-depressants in the bathroom trash and chuckled. Pain and suffering is often a fact of life, but it is not a spiritual problem. I know all too well that anti-depressants are pharmacological procrastination. I want my edge when I need it. But I didn't need it right this second so I grabbed some bourbon and laid down. My dog laid down next me. Sometimes the pain's not so bad when I lay down.

 

Your Bosom Friend in Pittsburgh,

Follow my blog with Bloglovin

When You Lose Your Mojo

 

photo credit: Joshua Franzos

Two weeks ago, I attended Failure:Lab, "a raw and intimate evening" where local celebrities took the stage and told their personal stories of failure to a packed Kelly-Strayhorn Theatre. I listened to four prominent men and women of Pittsburgh that night and I haven't been able to get their bravery out of my head since. The goal of the evening was not to provide train wrecks for the crowd to gawk at, rather it was to de-stigmatize the fear of failure and encourage intelligent risk taking. What a novel way of regarding it, I thought.

Failure is like a giant wave that knocks you down and recedes back into the ocean. The shame that follows it? Just like a lungful of saltwater. It feel like you're drowning even though you're on land. You retch. You choke. Your lungs and cheeks burn for what feels like years. We've all felt it. But failure, re-imagined? Failure with a new spin on it? Re-vamped. Re-branded. It's the new way to learn! It's all part of the journey! Who wants to sign-up? Anyone?

I considered what I might've said, had I been one of those brave people up there, then I realized that the novel I'm writing is already my attempt at making sense of some of my worst moments. I agree. I think failures are important, life-affirming stories to tell. They're humanizing. Bad decisions make for GREAT stories. But no one seems to tell them, especially in the fashion blogosphere, where life needs to be made-up, coifed, curated, stylized and perfected. Put your best foot forward. Make people wish they were you and had your life. I'd venture to say that nobody that is perfectly happy, with the perfect life ever starts down the fashion blog path. It's the gold rush of 2014. The current western female's American dream.

Someone confessed to me that my blog made her feel hopelessly inadequate. I stood there with my mouth open and blubbered something about that not being my intention at all. I went home and cried. Good God, what have I done? I was only trying to fool myself a little. Weren't we all aware that fashion is the ultimate illusion? Smoke and mirrors? No? If anyone could really, truly know how hopelessly inadequate I felt multiple times a day, maybe the world might be a better place. Some kind of universal understanding that, Hey, we're in this together and despite appearances, I too, by and large feel like



I used to work in an industry that impressed people. I appraised. I managed. I hired. I fired. People used to ask me a lot of questions about my job because it was a zany, fascinating world, but that doesn't happen anymore because I left it all to become a secretary. You heard it right. For the longest time, I experienced ego death every single time I met someone and they asked me what I do for a living. I'm an administrative assistant at a non-profit organization. Oh. That's nice. That's when they turned to my husband and asked him if he's a Canon or Nikon guy. For some reason nobody peppered me with questions about stuffing papers into envelopes or duplexing printers while they slosh their drink around. I used to have a peculiar and interesting job and now I'm normal.1 of the 2.4 million administrative assistant strong work force. 

You are not special. You're not a beautiful and unique snowflake. You're the same decaying organic matter as everything else. We're all part of the same compost heap. We're all singing, all dancing crap of the world.

                                                                                             -Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk

Mojo gone. But to be honest, I was in need of a good humbling. I needed to swallow large amounts of vanity-laced saltwater. So much it was gross. I don't think I could be a decent writer without the repeated injury to my pride. It keeps me grounded. I know I am capable of much, much more but I am here, and right now I am a secretary. My workplace openly admits that I'm overqualified. It feels good to hear them say it, but I still get down on myself, so to them and to you, I say: I'm overqualified, some of the time.

photo credit: Joshua Franzos

If you hate it so much what keeps you there? Well, I don't hate it. I like the people I work with, they are my community and I don't want to let them down. I want them to succeed and if I can do that by stuffing envelopes or entering data, great. But here's the beautiful thing about being, just a secretary. I can do the job and write in my head. 

I'm always writing in my head, kind of like a background virus-scanning process you might run on a computer while you do something else. My brain is trying to debug character motivations or next steps in the story I'm writing. But I'm not a computer program, I'm a human and sometimes there are fatal system errors when fictional worlds and reality crash together. Sometimes I'll be thinking about combining two characters into one and I'll freeze in the work hallway because my brain shorts out.  Where was I going?...am I going to the copy room or am I going down to accounting? Sometimes I accidentally write my main character's name on my 1/2 eaten lunch before I put it in the office refrigerator. Oh, God and let's not forget that one time I accidentally answered the organization's main line, "Good Afternoon, Putnam Auction Galleries." (That's the fictional auction house in my book. Awesome job FRANZOS). 

photo credit: Joshua Franzos

photo credit: Joshua Franzos

photo credit: Joshua Franzos

Like I said, I'm over qualified for my job, only some of the time. But I am incredibly fortunate to have it and the kind of employers that want their employees to be happy. My work seems to understand, well, understand is maybe not the correct word, but maybe empathize...they can empathize with my desire to get this novel out of my head and onto "paper." It's been a year now since I requested to take an extra unpaid hour for lunch everyday so I can get over to the library and exorcise my demons write more. I make about $300 less a month because of my two hour lunches. I'm not going to lie, that kind of hurts, but that is the price of art and my sanity. It is what it is for now.

photo credit: Meryl Franzos

I'm three years into this novel and 60% done, almost ready to jump into the third act, where my main character runs away from Pittsburgh and takes a heart-wrenching road trip up the California coast. So close I can taste it. It may take longer than you want, but as heroes we must trust the journey. I've been reading Joseph Campbell's Hero With a Thousand Faces - the book about The Hero Journey or The Monomyth. This is the quintessential story-line every good hero, from Buddha to Pinocchio to Jane Eyre, will take. Failure is the "Belly of the Whale" stage. You tried, but you get swallowed. 

"But here, instead of passing outward, beyond the confines of the visible world, the hero goes inward, to be born again...Allegorically, then, the passage into a temple and the hero-dive through the jaws of the whale are identical adventures, both denoting, in the picture language, the life-centering, life-renewing act."

                                                                          -Joseph Campbell, The Hero With a Thousand Faces

Now, when Josh and I meet people to network and schmooze, and people ask what I do for a living, I tell them. I'm a secretary and a writer. Even though I've never published anything but what you see here on this blog, I'm calling myself a writer because I do it everyday. Been doing it everyday for three years and I will likely be a writer until it's pried from my cold, dead, arthritic fingers. You are what you do. You do what you can. When you emerge from the jaws of the whale and wash up on that shore, you'll find that your mojo has been there with you all along. 

You want to know what's in for spring? Failure. It's the new success. So get out there and make a mess. It's healthy. It shows you're trying. Yeah, baby, yeah.

photo credit: Joshua Franzos

What I Wore:

Turtleneck: Gap

Tunic: inherited Vintage pajama top. Try Calligramme for vintage lingerie and pajamas.

Pants: past season Loft

Boots: Vintage Nine West Cloud 9.

Bag: Vintage Coach 'city bag'.

Your Bosom Friend in Pittsburgh,

Follow my blog with Bloglovin