Life lately

Cardigan: Target | Top: J.Crew Factory | Skirt: Talbots | Heels: Urban Outfitters

Summer has been hectic, to say the least; this was my first year at work kind of having control of our adult summer reading program, which was an encompassing program that covered all ten of our branches and involved a lot of work to put together--not that I'm complaining, because I love summer reading and I'm VERY proud of the program & how it came together. But it's kept me very busy! There are days where my boss and I will go home and she'll text me and say "are you as tired as I am?" and the answer is almost always yes. And although summer reading is over, there are still statistics to compile, reports to write, debriefing to do...and then my boss is going on sabbatical for a month. And my coworker (and my very good friend) C. has moved to Atlanta to pursue her Ph.D. in English literature. I cried when she told me she was leaving, and I'm crushed to see her go, but the amount of pride that I have for her makes my heart glow like a neon sign in the desert.

This is also my first summer in a very long time with a boyfriend. (I know you're all chomping at the bit to hear more about him, and I promise I'll do a post about him soon!) It's made things harder--we are technically long distance, although he lives a two hour drive away instead of a two hour flight away, like my last boyfriend did. We see each other most weekends, and sometimes even during the week. Having him to rely on for support when I need it has been amazing, but I've felt a bit of a struggle between the life I've had for the last three years of hanging out with my friends and doing whatever I want & the life I have now--the one where I actually have to consider what someone else wants. I've been on the road a lot since February, when we first started dating, replacing curling for the most part with visiting my boyfriend. We will, hopefully, not be so far apart for TOO much longer, but my time has been taken away from other things...like spending half an hour taking pictures of myself in an abandoned parking lot.

But oh, when I get the chance to take those photos of myself, how I cherish it. Right now, it's about the only time that I'm truly alone. A lot of my friends now will probably tell you I'm extroverted, but it's not exactly true--I like to be social and active, but I need a lot of time to unwind and separate from the world, and I don't get to do that very often. I miss the chance to document what I wear, and to be honest, I'm going to be repeating some outfits in the future so I can photograph them for the blog. I miss manipulating my camera, experimenting with framing, and being the only model I'll never have full control over. And most of all, I miss all of you. Having people who understand what it's like to do this silly thing where we take pictures of what we wear and put them online for other people to look at is essential to having the motivation to keep coming back, and I always get that from y'all. And you have no idea how much I appreciate it.

And also I'm really lazy, but I can get over that. The point of all of this is to explain myself, I guess, but also to just verify that I'm going nowhere. My priorities in life have shifted some, from school and curling to work and boyfriend, but none of it matters if I'm not wearing clothing. I'll keep wearing clothing, and I'll keep documenting it whenever I can. Like this outfit...for which I got the daylights bitten out of me by noseeums, but it was worth it.