Wardrobe Update, Part 1: Where do I start?

I've posted a few times about my weight loss and subsequent wardrobe loss.  That process has now gone on for more than a year, as I slowly ceased to fit into most of my old clothes.  Or, more accurately, I slowly stopped being able to convince myself that each piece was fitting anymore.  I've now taken at least 3 international suitcase loads of clothes to the thrift store.  There's another grocery tote full in my room right now waiting to be donated.  (I still don't know I managed to own that many clothes to begin with.)  The process has been cathartic, but also terrifying.  I've had many pieces for a long time, because my height and weight haven't changed much in ~10 years.  I had a set of conference clothes I was confident wearing.  A set of sweaters I could stand by in winter.  I don't like change.  And I don't like shopping.

Clothing and fashion frustrate me, and always have, because I don't understand the rules (and I have some, um, choice opinions about the attractiveness of many 'fashionable' styles).  I explain my lack of a fashion sense by the fact that I wore a uniform to school for 13 years of my life.  I didn't have a big social life, so after school I'd either wear my uniform to things like piano lessons or choir rehearsal, or I'd throw on a baggy t-shirt and jeans.  That slowly changed in high school, but not by much.  The t-shirts just got less baggy.  In high school, we used to joke about wearing our uniforms in college because then we wouldn't need to think about clothes in the morning.  I ended up wearing a "uniform" anyway - most days I wore sneakers, jeans, a t-shirt, and a hoodie.  On a SLAC campus, that worked fine for me.  It doesn't work so well for grad school in New York City, so I've worked on adapting, but I'm still mostly mystified.

The one thing I've learned in the last 5-6 years is that most current fashions do not suit a petite, pear-shaped woman whose BMI sits around the border between 'normal' and 'overweight'. Skinny jeans? Not my friend. Cropped pants? I look like a hobbit.  Loose, slouchy tops? I lose all definition on my upper half, and look bigger than I am.

So I tried to do research.  I had in my head that I wanted a capsule wardrobe.  Simple and small, right?  I spent time compiling wardrobe tips for capsule wardrobes in my size and shape.  I learned a lot about what I should and should not wear (boot cut/flared jeans! empire waist dresses! focus attention at the waist and above!), but most of those capsule wardrobes were geared towards women in business and women who already had an eye for fashion.  Plus, it involved finding 20+ pieces that were all different (2 pairs of pants, 1 skirt, 1 dress, etc) but that all magically go with everything else.  Great for those with a closet base for that wardrobe, and the eye to make the combinations work.  But the shopping and the combining were too daunting for me.

Then, I found Into Mind.  She blogs about taking "a minimalist approach to personal style", and creates a capsule wardrobe via a different method.  She mentions the "Modular Approach" described above, but she focuses her capsule wardrobe around the "Uniform Approach".   Basically, about 2/3 of the clothes in her primary wardrobe are dedicated to her 'uniform' for the season - a particular outfit outline where she owns 3-4 versions of each part of the outfit (4 pairs of shoes, 4 tops, 4 bottoms, etc, where each category contains similar items of different color and/or different style).  Most days, she mixes and matches the 'uniform' items to create her outfit for the day.  The other 1/3 of her capsule wardrobe provides variety, either through mixing with 'uniform' pieces or through a completely different look.

Hey! Sounds like the way I work! I (sort of) know what I like, I don't want to think too hard in the morning.  I like the idea of having fewer things in my closet, but knowing that what I have suits my lifestyle and my body.  I just need to update my 'uniform' to grad school life in NYC, and then maybe I can stop thinking about this quite so much.

What did I decide on for my uniform? Did I survive my shopping trip? Did I break the bank? All this and more to come...

Hello there sunlight

About 2 hours ago, I submitted my NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Proposal.  I'm excited about the project, which I will actually start next week, and I have a halfway-decent chance at getting the Fellowship. 

I'm now climbing out of the hole that application made in my life - the sunlight greeting is an exaggeration, I will admit, but my life has been far more work than fun for the last few months.  The NSF hasn't been the only big work thing looming over my life, but it was the biggest deadline.  Now that it's over, I can do things like grocery shopping (not wasteless unfortunately, but now I have food in my cabinet again so I'm accepting that for the moment). 

I definitely started myself off onto the wrong foot this semester.  I've been running nonstop since I went to France for a conference in August, to the point where even taking time to have dinner with friends or cook or relax on my own felt hard.  I got a few moments - weekends or days away where I intentionally left the computer behind - but overall, I have been a little ball of stress.  And it's affected my life in a lot of ways.

For one thing, I haven't been shopping the way I want to.  In some ways, that's been good because I've been using up things in my cabinet.  On the other hand, I've had a CSA share in my fridge for 2 weeks and I should probably deal with that, but I haven't felt like cooking for a while.  I finally ran out of things in my cabinet and had to go to the neighborhood grocery store, rather than to the CoOp I'd rather shop at but which is far away.  And, particularly in the last week I've just been eating out.  My wallet's not thrilled with me, nor is my conscience. 

I also learned that when I don't get to spend time with friends, especially when I'm stressed and really do need to talk, I become a giant crankypants.  The day before a midterm several weeks ago, I nearly yelled at one of my officemates (of which I have 6, which is a whole other issue) and had to cut myself off midway through a loud, frustrated outburst in response to him.  At which point I walked to a nearby park, sat down, cried, and realized that I was not ok.  I've been spending more time with friends and with myself, but I need to give myself permission to continue doing so.

In short, I've learned that work will expand to fill the time I give it.  I'm hardly the first person to learn this lesson, I know.  But it was hard to be in the middle of it, knowing that I needed to relax and slow down but feeling trapped by the need to get everything done.  I could have asked my advisors and collaborators to give me a week or two off, but I wasn't willing to.  My classwork is mediocre, so I feel like I have to prove myself with research, but the lack of hard deadlines within that is messing with my head.  I'm impatient to get things done, and wanting to impress, but I need to stop biting off more than I can chew.  Otherwise, I'm gonna burn out. 

Anyway, that's me.  Hopefully regular posting will now resume, and there will be one less thunderous looking graduate student on campus. 

I wish I was canning

At the beginning of the summer, I decided that canning was going to take up too much time, so I didn't invest in a canning kit and jars.  I figured I could freeze what I needed.

Well, I'm taking up half the freezer.  I was so used to my old roommate never using the freezer, I forgot what it would be like to seriously share it.  One of my roommates is also freezing food for the winter, and we're running out of space fast.  I'm not sure what we would do if our third roommate were using the freezer in any significant way.  She's moving in a few weeks, so she hasn't added much, but I could see it getting bad if three of us wanted to use significant amounts of space. 

But here's the problem.  I have 5 weeks left in my CSA.  In those 5 weeks, also I need to do the following things:

1. Finish the paper from my 1st-year project.  That WILL happen by Friday.
2. Finish the paper from my undergraduate project.  My 2nd-year project is with a group that is co-lead by of my coauthors.  She's apparently complained about this enough that my PI says my first month is just finishing this old paper.
3. Apply for an NSF fellowship (this assumes the shutdown is resolved before that deadline).  I have no idea what my research plan will be.
4. Grade 2 undergraduate midterm exams.
5. Take my own midterm exam.

I really, really wish I had learned to can this summer.  I did learn that after one or two long, rough tries at a complicated recipe, I can make it pretty efficiently.  I figure canning would follow the same thing.  But I've run out of time for trials.  I'll have basically 1 evening per week to cook.  That already takes several hours, especially if I invite a friend over for dinner, and the thought of trying to learn a new skill on top of it makes my head spin.  So I'm either going to have to start giving veggies away, or figure something out to keep from wasting them.

Grrr!

(p.s. my CSA list is the same as it's been for weeks, so I'm just not posting it)

Summer Goals Recap

I had 5 goals for this summer. How did I do?

1. Work hard and efficiently at research.  This is why I'm here.  Subgoals:  Get the paper from my undergrad project submitted and through revisions (that depends a bit on collaborators and reviewers).   Get the paper for my current project finished by the time I go to a conference at the end of the summer (in France!)

The first half of this, I think I did alright on.  There were definitely some questionable days, but I'm overall pretty happy about how I did.

Subgoals: not met.  I mostly blame collaborators on the undergrad project, because they didn't get back to me for the entire summer until 3 days before I left for my conference.   For my current project, I'm getting close, and since I have to turn a write-up into my department next Friday, I'm pushing to finish the actual paper by then and just turn it in to the department as well.

2. Get my NY residency squared away and transfer all my mail, etc, up here.  I'm no longer a dependent on my parents for tax purposes, so I'm ready to transition away from MD being my primary residence.

Yeah, didn't happen.


3. Get my savings in order.  I set aside some money throughout this year, but didn't do anything with it besides stick it in the bank.  I have a mutual fund that is wanting for contributions, and I want to open a retirement account.  Subgoals: talk to HR since they sent me a letter about retirement plans, and research said plans.

Accomplished.  I opened a Roth IRA, and had a phone conversation with a Vanguard rep who talked over some of their offerings with me.  For the most part, it wasn't anything I hadn't seen on the internet, but it was nice to actually talk with someone and hear things laid out for me specifically.   I haven't contributed to my mutual fund, but I'm not sure whether I will, since it's not tax-deferred. 


4.  Sort some personal stuff out that's currently keeping me from dating anyone, and some other stuff that's screwing up my relationship with my parents.  These might be the same stuff; I'm not yet sure.

Sort of.  I've identified some of the issues with my parents, and I'm working on strategies for improving that relationship.  Related to dating...well, I'm making progress.  I think I'm nowhere close to getting everything sorted, but I'm starting to be ok with going forward and continuing to work on myself, rather than stall.  That could be good or bad, we'll see.


5. Eat or preserve everything in my CSA share each week.

Not perfect.  Maybe 1/3 of the weeks something's gone bad before I could eat it, but it's gone pretty well aside from that.   I've done very little preserving, but that will be changing in the fall since I plan on freezing a lot of things.