If 25 is a quarter-life crisis, 26 is a prelude into the late-twenties apocalypse, during which time you find yourself fighting the monsters of questioning your career, your future, and every decision you've ever made. Oh and don't forget the dreaded insurance! I'm pretty sure there is a circle of hell in which you're stuck searching for your own insurance on a loop.

Surprisingly, the enemy of age wasn't always considered such a foe. As a growing child I looked at adulthood with wistfulness, something that exuded sophistication and happiness and everyone got what they wanted, because that's what happens when you're an adult, right? (I know you are very much laughing out loud at this point. Don't worry, so am I) Cut to roughly fifteen years later and instead I find myself looking back at my youth with the kind of wistfulness in my eyes that our parents had when they would inevitably tell us about "the good old days." 

It's not that I miss my adolescence. In fact, I'm quite glad it's been left behind, as it hurt in the ways only adolescence mixed with a touch of mental illness can. The thing I do miss is the simpleness of it all. The feeling that you had all the time in the world and that anything could be solved with some Dashboard Confessional and the latest episode of The Hills. Sometimes the tiniest bit of regret creeps in for not living more freely during this time, and now that I can actually live freely in the name of travel and adventure and experience, I'm held back. Held back by the commitment of a full time job, responsibilities, money, and okay yeah, maybe some fear.

And so I wonder and I dream. I think we have a tendency to romanticize the things we haven't done, and to the world that can look like unhappiness. But does it have to be? Can it be okay to be in the present and still do a bit of longing? The thing is that I'm terrified of the future and so I get stuck in the past, in a maze of nostalgia and what ifs. But I don't think it has to be a bad thing. In a way I think it moves me forward, plucks me from my comfort zone and forcing me to live- because as much as we may want otherwise, we're always running out of time. 

Or are we? 

It's a slippery little slope, but contrary to belief, we don't have to have it all figured out yet. Maybe one day. 

The Art Of Getting Dressed

It's the part of our morning we've come to know so well: teeth brushed and coffee sipped, it's time to get dressed. So we open the closet door with the last bit of sleepiness in our eyes and wonder "what am I going to wear now?" Or, if you're like me, you'll know what you're wearing already, picked out and ready to go, but the end result is the same. We get dressed. It's the one part of our day that we know will happen, and it's one that can have the most meaning, even if we don't mean for it to.

What Fashion Has Taught Me About Feminism | Women's Day 2020

"There are no rules, no regulations, no frontiers that a woman cannot reach or surmount." -Oscar De La Renta 

It's hard to believe that this is my sixth year of celebrating International Women's Day on this blog. In a way, the first year I wrote about it was also the first year I really considered myself a feminist. Sure, I'd always believed in equal rights, but I shied away from the feminist label. (even though that's literally the definition of feminism)