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There’s a finch building a nest outside my window. Well, technically speaking, there are many finches building a nest, I think. House finches, to be exact. And, again, technically speaking, I think the nest is already built. I can’t quite see it from inside the room, but when I go outside and I look up, I can see it there, poking out from an half-broken shutter. The birds wedged the twigs and branches in between the shutter slats and the wall, the bulk of the nest causing the remaining slats to jut out a bit. In other words, the ancient shutter now looks even wonkier than it did before the nest got there. It also makes the house look a little rougher around the edges and slightly more haunted, but I mean — who am I to make them leave? They orchestrated a whole little world for themselves behind that faded green shutter. Good for them. Plus, they’re pretty cute.
A lot of them have brightly-colored bellies, a Fuji apple red that sparkles when the sun hits them. I see them flying from the nest to the bird feeder and back again, tiny red rubies darting through the air. I sit at my desk and I hear them outside the window, chirping happily, or at least I like to imagine they’re happy. That the nest is kind of a big deal. A real achievement. I imagine they’re pretty proud of themselves. They have a view of the river from there and everything. Whenever I hear them out there, I have this moment where I smile and think about all of this and then, like today, I move onto something else that’s grabbing for my attention. There’s a finch building a nest outside my window, but I am thinking about pants.
Pajama pants, that is. If we’re being very specific, pajama pants-as-real pants. Shorts, too. You know the boxer shorts trend? It’s my current fixation. Tomorrow it will be something else. But on this particular day, it’s this. On this particular day, I am opening the homepage of Anthropologie, filling my cart with options, and then closing it again. We’re not shopping right now, Olivia, my brain says. You don’t need them, it says again. But you could look so cool with these pajama-pants-as-real pants, my brain also says. I re-open the website tab. I search for a discount code I know doesn’t exist. I imagine myself at the farmer’s market, the coffee shop, the bookstore, a gallery. I imagine them with Mary Janes. I have a pair already, but they’re not quite right. Red would be better. I open another tab. Find the red Mary Janes. They’d be an investment, really, my brain says again. And you could link them, it reiterates. Make back some of what you spent. Round and round I go, ignoring the balance on my credit card, ignoring the commitment to spending less and saving more that I had made 24 hours earlier.
I wrote about my relationship with shopping and overconsumption last year, but I find myself thinking about it maybe more than ever lately. It’s been more than a year since I had any sort of “strategy” when it comes to sharing affiliate links, and though I thought maybe that change would make my relationship with shopping and overconsumption easier to navigate, I’ve found untangling it to be more complicated than I expected. Yes, I’m shopping less than I was in the days where I had a goal every month of how much I wanted to make from affiliate sales, but I’m also making less money than I did when I was sharing links every single day and posting branded content almost every week. This means that I have to be a little more thoughtful about how I’m spending and what I’m buying, and also that it should be even easier for me to see the list of all the other things I have to save for and how long that will take at the current rate and to say no to the pajama shorts or whatever else, right? But being online just does not make it easy. Having spent so long shopping with the question of: Can I share this? Can I link this? Can I make money off of this? ringing in the back of my head certainly doesn’t help, either.
It’s possible that all of this is coming up for me more lately for kind of a lovely reason: I am falling in love (once again) with getting dressed every day. I am finding so much joy in thrifting and feeling creative about outfits. I am learning to appreciate my favorite pair of jeans and styling them a million different ways more than I am spiraling about the pairs in my closet that no longer fit me (though, of course, I still do that on occasion too). I am finding joy in fun little Etsy finds and colorful, bold outfits to wear on my upcoming book tour. I am just loving it all, and I am loving it all despite being in a place where I find myself having almost as many bad body image days as good ones, and god… if that’s not some kind of a win, I don’t know what is. But maybe best of all, I am sharing these outfits every day not because I know I will make money off of them, but because I genuinely feel excited about getting dressed and experimenting with clothing right now. And I don’t know if you know this, but I tend to share whatever it is that I’m excited about. For the record, I really like this about me. And it’s not that I wasn’t excited about anything I was posted a couple years ago, but when everything is an opportunity to make money, your brain doesn’t work the same way, and neither does your creativity — at least mine didn’t. It’s not that I don’t still link things here or there, either, or that I’m not happy to share outfit info if someone asks for a link or a brand name (I am — ask away!!). I just don’t feel like that is the goal anymore.
I can still remember the times I shared an outfit I felt great in and and then checked RewardStyle after to find I only sold two of the dresses, and then felt like maybe it wasn’t such a good outfit after all. I can remember the times I shared items only from certain angles, knowing they’d sell better if I looked like the thinnest version of myself possible in the image. I can remember obsessively checking on link clicks and story views and watching the numbers fluctuate and imagining the millions of reasons why that might be. Part of this is just human nature and society and the ways we’ve been conditioned to exist within it, but the other part of it is what happens when every part of your life becomes marketable. I know so many hardworking, wildly creative influencers who inspire me in fashion and beyond every single day, and I don’t intend for any of this to be dismissive of what they do and the thousands of hours of work they put into their content. I know first hand that it’s hard work. And, in fact, pulling back on influencing to focus on writing was, in part, only possible because of the money I had saved and continued to make from influencing. I’m grateful for that and, for the most part, I’m proud of the content I created. But I also can name the ways it changed how I think about a lot of things, without me even realizing it, and one of those ways is absolutely how I spend money.
But I know I’m not the only one who goes through these cycles about shopping, buying thing and imagining it will finally make us into the person who wears nice underwear, or goes hiking, or never wakes up late. I’ve been thinking about writing an essay about all of this for a while now, but I kept putting it on the background. Partly, I wonder if this is because I’m conditioned myself to account for being held accountable (though, to what, I’m not sure). I guess maybe it feels disingenuous if I know that at some point in the next few weeks, I will purchase something I don’t need. I will buy the pajama pants, probably. I will click ‘check out’ a little too quickly. Maybe I’ll share it on Instagram or I won’t. I don’t know. In a way, I think this is a larger symptom of sharing so much of my life online (and monetizing so much of it, too). It is hard to have opinions that are somewhere in a gray area, or to vocalize that you’re still figuring something out. But most of the things that I struggle with exist in a gray area. Most of them are complicated. I think there should be more room to explore all of that. I also think that over the last year or so, I have figured out and been reminded of some things when it comes to shopping that work for me — all of which I feel like I need to go back to right now, as I sit here thinking about pajama pants. I thought I’d share those here. (I also highly suggest checking out this post from
which echoed so many of my own thoughts about shopping and overconsumption).Set a monthly closet clean-out date and stick to it. I’ve talked about this before, but checking in with myself monthly about my wardrobe is one of the most helpful things I’ve done in the past to help myself be more thoughtful about what I’m buying and wearing. I already do this maybe 1-2 times a year, but when you do it monthly, it’s impossible to ignore the items you debate donating or selling time and time again, and the things you never wear. I need to re-institute this habit and schedule with myself.
Hide whoever you need to hide. As someone who has at one point or another tried to personally sell basically everything I own to strangers on the internet, I can tell you that there is a reason why scrolling Instagram makes you want to shop. I hide people and influencers I love constantly. Constantly. It helps.
Re-wearing outfits is a win. Want to hear something sad? I used to get this anxious, icky feeling when I re-wore outfits because I knew I had missed out on an opportunity to post/link something new. All those people you follow who wear new things every week? Yes, it might be because they have the money to shop all the time, but it’s also because they make money off of it. It’s easy to consume it all and just think that by wearing the same stuff all the time, you’re somehow failing at something. But you’re not! In fact, it’s a win. You found something you LOVE. I try to remind myself of this.
It doesn’t have to be all or nothing. I admire people who do no-buy challenges or commit to only buying secondhand. I know myself well enough, though, to know that all-or-nothing thinking usually does not work for me. I know I am going to click the links. I know, particularly as someone who is plus size, that I am never going to be able to build my dream wardrobe of only secondhand finds. I like clothing too much to have a capsule wardrobe. I mean, let’s be honest, I am fully committed to a series of looks that match my book cover for my book tour. I love fashion! But I also don’t need to swipe up on every thing I see. Having said that, I also don’t need to beat myself up when I have one glass of wine and decide to buy an absurd raccoon-themed shirt on Etsy on a whim. I’m not trying to be “perfect” at this, I am just trying to be thoughtful. The same goes for how I share and link things, too. For example, I’ve been really enjoying sharing my top purchases of the month in my Month In The Life (January, February) posts, because it gives me time to really assess what’s been worth it for me. I can test out skin care for weeks or months, then share. I can make sure the clothing is something I wear again and again. I can sing the praises of a $5 plate-bowl from Target that I use twice a week now. The thing is, I like creating. I do. I like sharing what I love. So much. I just feel like a better version of myself when I’m more thoughtful about it than not. I’m so thankful that Substack has given me the ability to do that.
Pause and consider how you’re feeling. To me, shopping (at its worst) often feels like compulsive scrolling. I’m chasing a dopamine hit that I know is ultimately going to make me feel worse, and yet I can’t seem to get myself to stop or to say no. When I’m shopping from a place of “this will make me into a better version of myself,” that’s when things get tricky. And honestly, this is fairly easy to spot. My heart starts to race a little bit, and this anxious monkey in my brain is telling me that if I hit ‘buy,’ then I will know that I have just acquired something that will make me prettier, hotter, smarter, cooler, better, so then I can relax, right? No. That’s not how that works. This is partly why I have loved going thrifting so much lately (though, I am also going to need to cut back on that for a bit!); you’re really forced to spend time with the physical item and to assess whether you want it, how you will wear it. It’s slower. Sure, I still pick up things that I don’t really want or need, but more often than not, I put them back.
The thing is that sometimes I’m going to be marveling at a bird building a nest, appreciating the small beauty of a single moment, and sometimes I’m going to be obsessing over a pair of pajama-pants-as-real-pants that I don’t need and missing all the little things that are more important, and sometimes maybe it’s a little bit of both. Sometimes I’m more interested in one version than the other, and sometimes all the versions exhaust me, to be honest. Sometimes none of me feels very marketable at all. Today, I’d say I’m somewhere in between.
Right this second, I’m on the heels of writing this outro maybe a dozen times, searching for the perfect kicker. In the back of my head, there is a voice that’s saying, “This is going to be awkward when someone sees you wearing the pajama-pants-as-real-pants.” And outside my window, there is a finch, chirping so loudly that my podcast mic picked it up. I like to imagine maybe he’s cheering me on, or that he turned to his nest-mate and said, “Jesus, who knew pants were such an ordeal?” I don’t know. What I do know is that the sound is gorgeous and that when I hear it tomorrow and the next day, I’ll probably smile again. And while I the version of me in the cool pants and I can see her in a picturesque farmer’s market line buying more things because, you know, it’s all part of the vision, I also like this version. I like this me sitting at my desk, jeans unbuttoned because obviously. Back curved over my laptop in a way that looks painful and, I can assure you, is. Typing away, trying to squeeze out a perfect paragraph that continues to allude me. Listening a gorgeous sound and making a point to remember it. I mean, I know I can be both. There’s no reason why not. But shopping sometimes makes me forget that this version is right here, right now, and you know, I really, really like her, too.
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I think part of that icky feeling of re-wearing an outfit too comes from early aughts media. I regularly hear Kate from the Lizzie McGurie movie mocking her accusatorily for being an "outfit repeater". The horror!! Then I remind myself that I don't remember what anyone else wore to the last graduation/shower/insert event here and it's not even the same people and put on the repeat outfit that I love! I can't even imagine the added influencer pressure on top of all that.
Olivia, I’ve loved seeing your stories about getting dressed and thrifting lately! You’ve inspired me to get dressed more often (wfh life…) and fall in love again with much of what is already in my closet ☺️