Hello, my poor neglected blog.

This week, instead of snarking at fashion, I decided to get a little more personal.  What prompted this was my somewhat impulsive decision to dye my hair turquoise.  Well, I was shooting for turquoise, but I’m still not happy with the color, despite multiple applications and an attempt to lighten it.  And I can’t decide if I’m not happy with the color because I think it looks bad, or if I’m not happy because I don’t feel like me.

This was the first week.  I have no idea what I was doing or talking about. None whatsoever.

This was the second iteration, after I put some more color on it, in an attempt to make it look more blue-green than green.  Too dark.  Too green still.

This was after an application of Color Oops (after that stripped out the color, I got a frightening vision of what my hair would look like if I went back natural) and a re-application of the two lighter shades of blue I’ve used.  BLUE. Not turquoise.  BLUE.  It’s not lighter enough and it’s also still green.

The reaction to the hair has been positive, but I still don’t know how I feel about it.  It’s too dark, I think, but more than that, I feel like I’ve lost a piece of my identity.  When I was a kid, I LOATHED my hair.  I got teased about it by kids.  In elementary school, we had an assignment to draw a picture of ourselves in 20 years, and I drew my hair black.  I planned to dye it as soon as I could.

But as I got older, I got used to it. And then it became part of who I am.  Not everyone can be a soulless ginger.  And while the blue/green underneath colors felt like me, like I should have had them all along, the all-(whatever freaking color this is) look does not.  Is it just that it’s a big change? Or is it that I really hate it?

Part of my problem is that I’ve been going through a bad depressed patch.  There’s no real reason for it, but I just feel out of sorts and useless and ugly and full of fail.  While I do not want to be an “influencer” or have a blog full of shit I don’t like and don’t wear IRL, I also do not wish to be invisible.  And try as I might to be positive and supportive of other bloggers/instagrammers, I just do not like or agree with some of them.  I like more than I hate, but I don’t understand what makes some of them have as much of a following as they do.  I’m like, who are these 9000 people following you, and how?  How do you get those kind of numbers?  Is there a goat sacrifice involved?

I know that some of my incredulity comes from envy.  I mean, I wish I could make a lot of money from writing, but that’s not going to happen unless I devote more time to it and/or step up the photos and outfits and accessories and shit.  At some level, I know that the life of a social media consultant would not be for me.  I hate people.  I don’t even like when I have to talk to clients at work.  I don’t want to be nice to people I think are stupid.

My other issue is that so many of them are so young.  They’re in their 20s and early 30s.  I wish I had that level of optimism, but I don’t.  I don’t think I ever did.   What keeps me there is the people who are honest.  The people who admit that some days they just can’t.  That they’re suffering from the same depression and anxiety, that they don’t feel like they’re good enough, that even if they have a following, they don’t feel adequate.  The people who make me feel a little less isolated and broken.

Another aspect of my dissatisfaction is on the career level. Don’t get me wrong. I like my job, but I see a lot of pay information and corporate e-mail and other things that make me wonder exactly how people get into jobs that are better-paying that do not require additional education.  I also hear this “well, I was working in legal, but then I got on at [other company].”  HOW?  Who did you know? What did you say? Where did you hear about another job and how did you even get someone to look at your resume when all it says is paralegal paralegal paralegal.  I’m not really STRUGGLING financially right now, but I’m not where I want to be.  And I know that part of it is my tendency to stress-shop, but there’s more to it than that.  I just never really understood how to get ahead in life.  Growing up, the adults around were things like engineers and scientists and doctors, or teachers, or something else that when you get a specific degree, you know what jobs you’re qualified to do.  I have no idea what other shit I’m qualified to do, I just know that I could write bullshit emails and do bullshit power points and talk in abbreviations the way some of these executives do.

I don’t know where I was going with this post, I just wanted to articulate some of why I feel lost.  It’s hard to write about fashion or anything else when my brain won’t stop broadcasting “You’ll never be anything because you’re not pretty enough or ass-kissy enough or lucky enough or the right kind of smart or self-confident enough.”  Coupled with the bombardment of negative internal messages is the chronic pain that saps my energy way too often.  I’m supposed to have another CT scan or myelogram shortly, so my doctor can see what’s going on and why the last procedure didn’t work.  I have very little hope that what they find will be fixable.

I guess what I really wish is that I could stop comparing myself to other people and finding myself wanting.  It’s just difficult to do that.  It’s difficult to see people traveling the world and coming home to nice houses and driving cars that they’re not afraid will break; it’s hard to know that part of the problem is that your body and brain are broken and that where you are is not a bad place.

I don’t want to be a negative person, but it’s hard for me to view things in a favorable, positive light.  I’m trying.