Dress: Cooperative, Urban Outfitters * Tights: We Love Colors (maroon) * T-strap flats: Urban Outfitters * Belt: thrifted * Wood bangle: H&M
Please be warned: this is a wordy post. Bear with me. Also, please note that I'm incredibly happy that the day that I took outfit photos at a playground was also the day that I decided to tackle big, "grown-up" topics on the blog. Silly coincidence, or self-aware irony?
I do want to start by saying how much I have fallen in love with this outfit. It felt awesome, looked fab in person, and photographed wonderfully. Most boyfriends aren't even that awesome!
Without going into too much detail (I know you all love how delightfully vague I can be about work stuff), one of the events I worked at a couple of weekends ago demonstrated something really interesting to me, something that I'd like to share. A few of the invited guests were colleagues and friends of mine from a few years ago. There were five of us, total, on Saturday, who had all spent quite a bit of time together three years ago, and haven't all been in the same room since then. Part of what we ended up talking about was how our lives are going, and how we thought they would go the last time we were all in a room together. It was quite amazing to see how "grown-up" we'd all become, how much we each had certain pieces of our lives so put together. I remember spending time with all of them, in that same room, three years ago, lamenting about how we felt that our lives were spinning out of control, how we couldn't believe that we'd get a handle on things. School, work, relationships, families...we all had these major issues that completely upturned our worlds, and we were all floundering through this extraordinarily difficult year. And then, three years later, we're sitting in this room talking about our lives, and our goals, and how all that crap and all that stress has taught us each so much about how we interact with the world.
We used to talk about that rough period as a "gap" period. The time between phases of life where everything seems up in the air, and you feel like you have no control over the direction that your life is going. My "gap" period lasted a couple of years, years when I was trying to deal with major relationship issues, and finish graduate school at a time when I felt more and more burnt out everyday, and find a job during this delightful recession we've been treated to. And honestly, the "gap" sucked. There have been many times in the past couple of years when I felt so sincerely disheartened about my life, and my goals, and myself. But the other weekend, as we were all talking about it, one of my friends suggested that we rethink the "gap". That maybe it was more productive for us to think about it as a bridge. All that crap that we go through during these in-between times in our lives may not be as negative as we think they are. It's always hard to go through those kinds of things while they're happening, and there's no denying that. It sucks to apply for job after job in a down economy, getting turned down time and again despite your stellar recommendations and graduate degree. And it's painful to reevaluate relationships and try to move on. And it hurts to not get to see your family every day, and to have to make new friends in a new place, without the built-in social structures that school provides. And it's paralyzingly frightening to try to figure out what to do with the rest of your life. But, but, BUT, in retrospect, at the end, each of those things majorly contribute to the place that you end up.
It's not a gap, not a time where things just fall into oblivion. Instead, it's a time where each difficult decision, each embarrassing job interview, each failed first date, all pave the way to the place that you are now, and build a bridge to the other side of all that. And when my friend said that we should think about the "gap" as a "bridge", it pulled us all back into the now, and made us realize how far we'd come, and how much we have learned in the past few years. It was a wonderfully zen moment for all of us, as a group, and I hope to hold onto that sense of optimism and growth the next time I start feeling the gap.
Title song: Madonna, "This used to be my Playground"
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