Rediscovering A Former Self
January 10th, 2012 § 2 Comments
A few years back I broke my pinky toe. Annoying, painful and a mere blip in the grand scheme of things. A few months after that I broke the big toe on the same foot. More annoying, more painful and much harder to deal with. I hobbled around, then walked with a cane for a few months and wore one of those hideous space boots, before graduating to sneakers and then moving on completely. Other than the odd twinge in my foot when the weather changes and the inability to wear high heels, I’ve all but forgotten about both breaks.
Until last week.
Image via Wikipedia
I was clearing out some old shoes when I discovered a stash that would give Carrie Bradshaw pause. While I was never prone to sky-high Manolos, for a while there I had a serious thing for sexy high heels and all manner of expensive and impractical shoes – and a former flame who encouraged my bad habit.
It was incredibly odd to discover box after box of mostly unworn designer shoes that not only hurt my feet, but had me tottering about in the effort to look if not feel fabulous. While I still have a weakness for cute (and comfortable) shoes, what I no longer have is the instinct to sacrifice my comfort or ability to walk for a misguided sense of fashion.
Looking through those shoe boxes was like a weird trip down memory lane, or I suppose what others feel when looking through scrapbooks.
Red patent leather Prada platform pumps bought for a meeting and worn instead to a flirtatious lunch.
Blush colored Jimmy Choo peep toes worn to one of my book parties.
White beaded suede Giuseppe Zanottis bought for a wedding that never happened – my own.
In other words, more than concert ticket stubs or love letters, these impractical and uncomfortable style statements reminded me of trying to cram myself into a beauty or fashion ideal that is no longer my own. And I’m okay with letting go of them.
Goodbye Cruel Shoes.
Delicious Minimalistic Holiday Wishes
December 23rd, 2011 § Leave a Comment
My friend Iyna posted this link to a slideshow featuring iconic architecture constructed out of gingerbread. Included are Frank Lloyd
Image by kevinq2000 via Flickr
Wright’s Fallingwater complete with bricks made of Sweetarts and Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House.
Last night I spent some quality time at the Crafting Modern exhibit at the Museum of Arts and Design, and over the weekend I’ll be rewatching the Ray and Charles Eames documentary that aired on PBS earlier this week.
In all, I’m feeling rather spoiled for choice this holiday season and not missing a minute of the crazed shopping and acquiring frenzy that used to mark my Decembers.
Wishing you a holiday season with a minimum of stress, but jam-packed with soul nourishing and interesting experiences.
Useless Tchotchka #12837
December 5th, 2011 § Leave a Comment
Warby Parker, an eyeglass company known for their sleek styles and affordable pricing have produced a product that almost defies
Image via Wikipedia
belief. I say almost, because one imagines that a company geared to hipsters, cheapsters and those looking to make an inexpensive fashion statement might actually find this item useful.
It is…
a monocle.
No, really. A single framed eyeglass generally favored by movie villains and war criminals has suddenly reemerged as a seemingly viable fashion statement.
And how soon after purchase and the initial ‘ooh,’ ‘aah’ and chortle do we suspect this will be filling landfills and junk drawers everywhere?
A Pared Down Holiday Season
November 28th, 2011 § Leave a Comment
I’m not a fan of Black Friday (other than as an economy spurring device). Small Business Saturday makes me question American Express’s motives more than anything else, and Cyber Monday kind of gives me the creeps in a Neal Stephenson sort of a way. It
Image via Wikipedia
isn’t that I don’t love to shop, it’s that I hate the rigidity and new enforced holiday spending madness. Also that creepy Target Commercial woman.
This year I created a new holiday ritual. Instead of stocking up on more of the same, I tried to rid myself of old, unneeded and unused. It was a weird feeling to be clearing space out instead of clogging it up.
My journey toward clarity seems to take longer than anticipated, since I’ve been not only working, but also examining every item and trying to figure out how it once fit in my life, and if there is in fact place for it in my future. It’s also a challenge to reject the idea of disposable everything, but
instead trying to measure things based on need and usability.
Which brings me back to the holiday shopping madness. When even isolated incidents involving pepper spray are reported, when store employees have to spend upwards of 12 hours at work when they should be spending time with family, and when the holidays feel more chore than cause for celebration, it’s time to rethink our motives and messaging.
Bah, Humbug and all that to rampant consumerism even in a crappy economy.
More is Less (for me) Online
October 24th, 2011 § Leave a Comment
It freaks me out slightly when I realize that I’ve had a personal website in one form or another for over a decade and a half.
It freaked me out a lot when I realized just how outdated my site really was. As was my business website. As were my blogs. I’d been working so hard for other people, that I had no time to organize my own online presence.
As a serial entrepreneur, style expert, consultant and writer, I’m many things to many different people, corporations and institutions. I became somewhat cocky and took for granted the fact that most of my business is word of mouth. When attending events or conferences, I’m generally a speaker or panelist or known entity. I became spoiled and assumed that people who knew me, knew me and that that was good enough.
Only it really wasn’t.
In ignoring my own professional online reputation, I was sending an unintentional dual message to potential clients – that I was out of touch or didn’t really care about attracting them. Neither of those things are true.
I devoted a good part of the last few months rethinking not only my business brand, but my personal brand as well. I lecture on both subjects at top universities, yet have been operating at such a breakneck speed that I haven’t had time for my own.
While I’d been using one URL for my personal site since the early nineties, I realized it was time for a change. I also realized that my business was due for a makeover, and that people sometimes got confused when face with the many elements of my professional self.
While my original intention was to combine all of my professional elements, I realized that as a long-term business and search engine optimization strategy it would be a better idea for me to organize each of my business elements separately. Instead of paring down, I chose to update by deleting blogs that didn’t move my business forward, starting targeted ones, breaking down and polishing up each unique element of my professional selves. It would also save me time in explaining each unique element of what I do, or waiting for people to discover it on their own.
My strategy wouldn’t work for personal possessions, and it likely wouldn’t work for everyone, but it’s been a great way to generate online traffic, organize the elements of my brands and offer a simple and elegant approach to attracting more business or simply offering controlled information about myself and my business.
In case you’re wondering:
Racheletc.com is my new online hub
Interrobangllc.com is my marketing business
BeautyHistorian.com covers my cosmetic industry expertise
byRachelWeingarten.com is my writing site
Craft or Clutter?
October 17th, 2011 § 2 Comments
I like to joke that I was born into sales, which is mostly true.
Image by liquidindian via Flickr
When I was two years old my mother opened her first business, a yarn and crafting shop. I’d sit attentively at her side as she gave instructions, paired colors and otherwise helped women (and the infrequent, but brave men inspired by Rosey Grier) learn to beautify their worlds through the art of crafts.
While crafting is enjoying a resurgence in popularity, for me it’s always been a lifelong hobby, if not obsession. I’m constantly amazed at the magic of taking threads, canvas or paint and weaving, winding or daubing them into beautiful or useful objects.
Like most crafty people, I’ve amassed a collection of half-started projects over the years. While I’ve finished too many to count, I’m constantly haunted by the ghosts of non-finished needlepoints, half-painted canvases or long forgotten granny squares.
There’s no craft too arcane that I haven’t made at least an initial attempt to master it (yup, even lampshade making). My hall closet is crowded with unpainted canvases and I have a trunk full of hat making supplies.
Like most crafty people, I also suffer from the urge to buy supplies when inspiration hits and then watch them languish when I can’t quite recall their original purpose.
One of the hardest things I’ve faced in my quest to declutter is deciding what to do with my abundance of crafts materials. Are they masterpieces waiting to happen, or yet more masses of tiny objects conspiring to crowd me in?
Friend/Frenemy/Former…Facebook?
September 6th, 2011 § Leave a Comment
Remember the youthful trend of bribing people with the promise to be someone’s best friend? You’d negotiate the exchange of a cookie or coveted seat on the school bus for a pal’s ephemeral elevated allegiance. Until the next grade-schooler came up with a more tempting option and you were back to being simply friends again.
Image by clotho98 via Flickr
These days online friendships are frequently measured by comments, likes and retweets. And offline? It’s complicated.
Time was, we’d pick up the phone for a long chat with nearly any of our friends. Now family, circumstance, career and technology have most of us playing phone/text/Facebook/Twitter/e-mail tag and trying to find an ever elusive mutually convenient time to catch up.
It’s exhausting.
It’s confusing.
It makes me question the nature of true friendships and revisit the thoughts behind an earlier post on pruning old friendships.
While I still have my core group of BFFs, some people I once considered close friends have become those with whom I [at best] share an occasional comment or inside joke on a shared social network. It’s all very civilized, but it feels crowded and sometimes fake.
Where a friendship might have once naturally run its course, it now seems to travel through a more circuitous path depending on shared public profiles. In many ways it was easier when a break-up was more permanent and moving on meant just that.
These days there seems to be the pull to publicly cling to as many former friends and colleagues as possible at the risk of losing sight of the more important and treasured friendships and relationships.
I don’t know about you, but I’m not sure that I want everyone who was once in my life to remain there. I didn’t love everything about high school and I certainly didn’t love everyone I went to school with – why would I want to know what their dog ate for breakfast?
I’m still trying to figure out how to tackle that particular persistent clutter without seeming anti-social-networking.
Treasures from Trash
August 29th, 2011 § Leave a Comment
I’ve spent a good portion of the last few weeks on Fake-Cation. I use my own variant, fake-cation, instead of more recently mainstream, accepted and twee staycation (or its dozens of spawns), because while I was mostly local, I ended u
p working and pitching, thereby making it more faux time off than fabulous escape. That burst of activity coupled with earthquakes and hurricanes and a rumored tornado (oh my) made my time off more eventful than restful.
And yet here I am refreshed and ready for big things this autumn. I should clarify, big good things this autumn. I could do without additional drama.
But on to the real thought of the day. Sometimes when you’re clearing things out you may discover a treasured object or something lost long ago. It doesn’t have to be buried treasure- sometimes a misplaced earring or bottle of shampoo makes you rethink your purchasing habits of the last few months. Instead of regret, per se, you might be filled with a memory of a purchasing things that worked for you instead of the ones most heavily advertised or highly priced. In these instances, it can encourage you to also start buying based not only on need or price- but based on quality, consistency and reliability.
So much more fun to have one that you love instead of eleven that fill you with post buyer’s remorse shame.
Clearing Out The Junk….Food
July 8th, 2011 § 1 Comment
At a recent visit to the doctor I discovered that I had perfect blood pressure – fairly shocking after the year I’ve been through. A friend asked me to what I attribute this fact, since we’d both shared woes of the specter of a fine family tradition of high blood pressure. “Well”, I said proudly, “Do you remember a few years back when I stopped eating junk food? Since then, I eat healthily, avoid salt or cooking with salt, walk as much as I can…” and then I stopped. Because that wasn’t entirely true.
Image by Getty Images via @daylife
Though I avoid meat, cook without or avoid salt when I can, avoid food with preservatives when I can and really do try to walk everywhere, I’ve found that junk food has found a sneaky way of sneaking back into my life. I did a quick mental tally of the last few weeks – from the rushed sandwich while on the go, to upheaval that could only be solved with a lot of teeth grinding and Pringles, I’ve become increasingly reliant on food better classified as junk.
Well that’s gonna stop too.
As I clear out the clutter from my life, I’m once again going to become more mindful of the junk I randomly ingest. As I treat my living space better and empty out the things that are distracting or no longer welcome, I’ll apply the same principle to my ultimate living, breathing space and vow to treat it a lot better. To that end, I’m going to be even more vigilant about what I eat and how much of it.
Here are some guidelines that have worked for me in the past:
1. I will try to prepare or cook the majority of the food that I eat
2. I will try to eat fresh, locally grown fruits and vegetables when possible
3. I will avoid overly processed, salted or mass market produced foods.
4. I will not add salt to food when cooking, and try to avoid adding salt when eating it
5. Junk food is not my friend. It probably isn’t yours either. So while fries are an infrequent treat, I’m going to try to avoid them and their kin altogether. Pringles- consider yourself warned.
6. Whole Foods prepared foods, etc. are better options, but not the best option.
(And I’m going to update The Conflicted Minimalist Manifesto right now!)
Garbage In, Garbage Out
July 6th, 2011 § 4 Comments
Way back in my geeky web 1.o days, when I worked on Silicon Alley and did things like programming one of the world’s first online radio networks*, an acronym frequently bandied about was GIGO or Garbage In Garbage Out. Loosely translated it touched on a computer’s ability to spew out massive amounts of nonsensical information based on the quality of data it was fed. Well, something like that.
Image via Wikipedia
In striving for a more minimalist existence, I find myself by turns challenging or embracing the notion of GIGO.
I marvel at some of the objects I’ve accumulated over the years and find myself wondering if it was garbage to begin with, did it become less meaningful over time, or as my aesthetic changed, could my perceptions have changed as well?
Then again, I’m likely over thinking the matter. If it doesn’t feel significant to me now, it’s probably best labeled as garbage and then quickly removed from my apartment before I have declutterer’s remorse.
Oh, and if you have time to daydream today, be sure to visit Upstater for a swoony view of Upstate NY real estate.
*Would I lie to you?
