Why I never get anything done: Adulting gets in the way

I am so ready for some utter nonsense.

I work for a company that is pretty flexible in allowing people to work from home, or at least my manager is. Which is a good thing because I needed to be home to wait for the installation of our new washing machine. It would be even better if the washing machine was now washing part of the mountain of laundry in the garage, but it's not. Because the installation guys aren't allowed to work with corroded pipes, and evidently the pipes in my garage are corroded. (I feel like this is the beginning of a dirty joke, but it's not. It's just my life today.)

So I called our plumber ("where did you find this guy?" Captain America asks me. "From the business card on the fridge," I tell him. "It's going to cost us an arm and a leg," Captain America tells me.). The plumber cheerfully offers to come over tomorrow at 4:30. It's not perfect, but then this whole thing isn't perfect. But I can make 4:30 work because I have a flexible and understanding manager.

I open up outlook to send my manager a calendar notification telling her that I'll be working from home again tomorrow afternoon due to this plumbing debacle only to find that my internet is no longer working. I go into the office (I've currently taken over the dining room table for work because we've recently had a heat wave and the dining room has a ceiling fan but the office doesn't) to restart the router, and I press the restart button. And nothing happens. The lights don't blink on and off, there's no clicky sound of a button being pressed. Nothing.

I decide to use our old wireless router (we've very recently changed wireless service providers), which for some reason is still plugged in and working just fine, despite Captain America's cancelling the service. The old router is working just fine on my phone, but not on my laptop. It wants some sort of 8-digit all-numeric pin that the laptop is claiming is on the router. There is no 8-digit all numeric anything on my router.

So I unplug all of the routers, plug them back in, and track down about 95 different passcodes, Meanwhile, I've checked that we don't actually have a laundry emergency (Captain America has exactly one clean uniform left, so we don't need to go to a laundromat tomorrow), and I go to text him this information. And there's some sort of weird voice text bar sitting over my text box. So I can't actually see the words I'm texting. Which of course would be fine if the words I'm writing actually ended up in the text, but as autocorrect can be quite the bitch, I really can't rely on that. Fortunately, I'm just texting my husband and he already thinks I'm nuts.

I give up and call Captain America. Captain America asks me to reschedule the installation of the washing machine for Friday, and to call our internet guy to see if he can figure out what the problem is. Then some garble comes over the radio and he says "I'm at work. I have to go." I'M AT WORK, TOO, I want to shout. But of course, by this point, he's off saving the world and I'm only yelling at a bunch of uncooperative technology.

Fortunately, by this point the internet is working again, and I'm able to google my iPhone problem. And the solution is to power off my phone. Of course it is.

While my phone is powering on/off I email my manager to explain to her a) why I haven't actually accomplished a single thing since I left the office, despite being on line for 5 hours, and b) why I'll need to work from home again tomorrow afternoon. She writes back and says, "Oh. I forgot about you."

Clearly my job is impactful.

So much to do, so little time

As I was preparing to write this post, I was actually thinking, is this worthwhile, or should I not post about this and instead move on to something else? But then I remembered that I actually liked blogging, and that in the time I was spending thinking about doing it, I could just write the damn post. You're welcome.

As you many recall (or not, since I'm an inconsistent blogger), I am working on a year of transformation. One thing I've been working on is learning to see myself accurately. This is important to me for many reasons, but one of them is that I'd like to grow my career. I'm very smart. This is not the problem. But I know I don't have the interpersonal skills I need to get where I want to go. Because frankly, I don't like people. What I'm learning, however, is that I don't have to like them to get along with them.

Anyway, because of all of this, I've been reading a lot about how the brain works, especially as it relates to emotional intelligence. Which is one of the things I could be doing now if I weren't writing this.

I recently asked a friend how a would-be-writer (this is how I would classify both of us. We've both written books. We don't have agents. We know we can write. This whole rejection letter thing is just part of the process)...anyway, I asked this friend how would-be-writers managed to have day jobs (because: bills! standards of living!), find time to write, read about the art of writing, read books in their genre, query agents, and do functional things like exercise, laundry, and grocery shopping.

Her response was: poorly. Then she noted that this may be why writers are over-weight alcoholics. (Before you get all worked up over this accusation, I seriously doubt writers, as a population, are more overweight and alcoholicy than non-writers, it's just that working in more-or-less isolation makes you forget that no one else is particularly good at adulting, either.)

I'd like to get back to the "poorly" bit, though, because everyone I talk to, specifically all working women I know, feel like they have too much going on and/or they are dissatisfied in some aspect (or aspects) of their life. So much, in fact, that they don't think they're doing anything well. Obviously we're all doing stuff "good enough." Our bills are paid. Our families eat. We have jobs and dental insurance.

Here is a list of stuff, in no particular order, that I'm not doing as well as I'd like to:

• Eating food that's actually good for me
• Exercising enough to meet my goals
• Sleeping enough to not be a bitch
• Whatever my job is (I just changed roles, so I'm sort of off the radar as work is transitioned, which is nice, but also makes me feel like I'm not contributing enough)
• Blogging enough to have a following (why do I need a following? As a social media platform for that book I haven't published yet? I don't even know)
• Editing my book into something that can be published
• Outlining my new book so editing it will be easier than this one (ha ha ha!)

I know. My mother is going to take a look at this list and tell me to cross half of it off as unnecessary. Honestly, this is too many things to focus on. So what I'm actually working on is getting enough sleep. 

I've been doing a lot of reading about sleep (sleep, the brain, and yet my next book is about zombies. I'm not really helping myself here at all). Everything I read says, in a nutshell, that sleep is THE THING that will make everything else better/easier/more efficient/prettier/more baconier/and in general more awesome. Sleep helps curb food cravings. Sleep helps your tummy know when it's full. Sleep makes exercising easier. Sleep makes thinking (presumably part of my job) easier. I'm sure sleep will help me focus enough that this blog isn't a rambly hot mess, sleep will make me a smarter writer. And sleep will make me less bitchy. If only I had a nap desk!

If you can't articulate a problem, does it exist?

What do you call it when you have educated intuition? I'm actually not even sure if that is a term, but it should be, or at least there should be a term for it. What I'm talking about is not the sixth-sense sort of intuition, but more the sort of intuition you have about something you're familiar with.

For instance, I know a woman who bakes a lot of bread, and she can look at the dough and say "Not enough yeast" or "It's too sticky" or even "I can't make bread today--it won't rise in this weather."

So far, she's never been wrong with these assessments, but I can't see what she's talking about. Bread-making is not my skill-set. (I am very good at baking, but bread-making is a whole other branch of culinary chemistry.)

In general, this educated intuition is good--it's why I can do a high-level review of files and find the error. It's how cooks know to add a little more of one seasoning and not another. It's how we make a lot of day-to-day decisions that we may not even realize we're making.

But this educated intuition can be frustrating, too, when either you don't have it, or you can't access it fast enough.

I was recently at a writing conference where possible titles were being suggested for an as-yet unpublished work, and I knew that the facilitator was listening for a certain rhythm, or cadence, or structure as he rejected titles or put them on the mental "maybe" list. But I am not a professional writer (yet) and I don't have years of experience (or any at all) in the publishing industry. I couldn't hear the difference between suggestions like "The Stone of God" and "God's Stone." (Which one would you be more likely to buy based on title alone?) (Also, if you google image these two phrases you get some similar, but mostly different results. Crazy, right?)

This is frustrating because as a would-be author, I want to market my writing in the best possible way. I want a title that works for the book, catches publishers' and readers' eyes, and is easy to promote. But I have no idea what this sounds like.

Similarly, I work with a woman who is very familiar with her field (we call her a SME--subject matter expert. Oh corporate America and your acronyms!), but when we're in meetings lead by strong personalities, she sometimes pauses before she speaks and by the time she decides what to say, the meeting has moved on to a new discussion point. When I asked her about this, she told me that sometimes she hears an idea, and it clicks around in her brain for a moment or two as she processes it. So she's nearly always a beat behind.

This is unfortunate in two ways: when her educational intuition says "that's won't work" but she can't pinpoint why, people move ahead with plans that have already been tried, or don't have enough data to be useful, or have some other limitation, when a more useful solution could be found if the matter were discussed a little longer. Secondly, when she hears something that sounds workable she doesn't speak up, so the rest of the room doesn't know that they're on the right path.

So obviously, in the first example, experience is a huge help, but it's also fairly easy to google book titles in your genre, or *even crazier* go to a book store and look at what sells (fantasy, for example, has a lot of titles where the structure is The [object] of [some location, person, etc.] as in The Sword in the Stone, while historical fiction uses a [Main character's name]:[His/her unique identifier] model, such as Elizabeth of York: A Tudor Queen and her World.

But what do you do when you can't access the data quickly? Should you interrupt the meeting and say, "I think you're going to find some problems with that suggestion, but I'll have to get back to you on them"? That sounds pretty lame. And you don't want to schedule another meeting to resolve something you thought was already resolved but turned out it wasn't, although this sort of thing happens all the time.

The problem, it turns out, is in the ability to articulate the problem.

Getting rid of stuff that's not working

As part of my Transform campaign, I'm working on making some changes in my life. But this process is largely trial and error. After reading Gretchen Rubin's book about habits, Better Than Before, I learned that the reward system largely does not work (e.g. If I lose 10 pounds, I can buy myself those cute shoes). Nonetheless, I still harbor the idea that if I do all of this hard work, I should get some sort of treat. I really don't know why this is.

I did learn that I am motivated by external sources, not internal (this was a bit of a surprise to me, too!). This doesn't necessarily mean other people--I love watching the little arrow progress around the treadmill's track signaling that I'm closer to completing another lap. But, this is also why I'm doing a sugar-detox diet with friends. Left to my own devices, I think I'd only be eating scrambled eggs and veggies. And I'd be doing a lot of crying. And I'd probably give up after about 5 days.

Part of this Transform journey is figuring out what works, but another part is figuring out what doesn't work. As it turns out, I really don't like exercising in the morning. When I lived in Oregon, I could manage it because I would work out with friends who lived in the same apartment complex, and we would use the complex's gym. Convenience, it turns out, is super-important to me. I am more likely to exercise at work, even if they don't have all of the equipment I'd like to be using, than I am to drive to my local gym. Mostly because I'm already at work.

I'm more functional when I have time to get up slowly. This morning I got out of bed at 6:40 am and left for work at 8:40 am. I'm pretty sure most people do not spend two hours getting ready to go to work, but I like to sit at the kitchen table and read while I eat breakfast, and whenever I don't do this, I feel sort of off-rhythm all day. Sometimes I do productive things before work, like pay bills, but most of the time I just read.

I've discovered that meditation does not work for me, at least not right now. It simply became another thing for me to do, and while I was meditating, I really, really struggled to turn off the "monkey mind." In theory, that's sort of the point of meditation--to be able to turn off the monkey mind, but I actually found my pulse speeding up while I meditated instead of doing whatever it was I needed to do IMMEDIATELY AFTER I FINISH MEDITATING. So I decided to stop trying to meditate. I might try again in the future, but right now, it is not a good fit.

As it turns out, this Transform project is also a project of self-discovery!

Not yet

I am a chronic over-scheduler. In general, I say it's because there are so many interesting things to do, and my job isn't one of them. But, alas, I have bills to pay! So I try to maximize my "free time" to the point where I literally fall asleep on the floor mid-post-run-stretch.

This is maybe not the healthiest approach to life...especially since I'm no longer in my twenties, when you can still conceivably beat up your body and get by. So, I'm practicing making "not yet" decisions.

To be clear, this is not a form of procrastination (like my constantly changing outlining of my novel may or may not be). This is for stuff that I'd really like to do, but there is no realistic way for me to do right now. This is not something I get to say about making credit card payments, going grocery shopping, or even scheduling dental appointments. That would be procrastination.

"Not yet" is for great ideas: we should go to Peru! It will be amazing! Yes, I'd love to go to Peru, and I'm sure it will be amazing (I mean, hello, llamas!). But, not yet. Let's put that on the 5-year plan.

"Not yet" is for decisions I don't have to make right now. Would I like to be a life coach? I think so, but I'll need to look into it a lot more. Is this something I can realistically take on right now? No. Well, then not yet. I cannot become a life coach yet.

"Not yet" is about realizing that there is a time/money/energy gap between many of the things I'd like to do, and my current availability to do them. It doesn't mean I can't ever do them, it just means I can't do them YET. It means I'm actively deciding to postpone decision making on things that don't need a decision YET. It means I can relax about some of the nebulous anxiety around ALL OF THE AWESOME THINGS I COULD BE DOING IF ONLY I WASN'T STUCK AT WORK!!! I'm just not doing those awesome things YET. It is not about giving up, or quitting; it is simply about acknowledging limitations, including that I can't possibly be doing everything all of the time.

The tragedy of jogging

Somehow, I have become a jogger. I used to be a runner, but I am now sufficiently slow that I do not feel that "run" is the verb that accurately captures my forward momentum, or lack thereof.

As you have probably guessed from the title of this post, this is not a development that I am pleased with.

A friend wants to run the Portland Marathon in 2016, a race that I've already completed three times. Immediately after finishing my most recent marathon (not Portland), I swore I would never run another again, but as my running partner prophesied, I'd change my mind. (She didn't. She's still over marathons.) Which means I have a year and 5 months to turn myself not only back into a runner, but back into a marathoner.

I have several books related to running, including anatomy, specific workouts, and even a few memoirs. The first step is, honestly, to lose some weight. Not because I'm trying to be skinny, but because I'm about 25 pounds over my  marathoning weight, and that's a lot of extra weight to carry for 26 miles. (I blame all of the thug muscles I've gained doing CrossFit. And the squats. Don't get me wrong, I still love CrossFit. But for me, CrossFit and marathons are not compatible.)

I'm trying to up my running (and cardio in general) to get to a consistent number of miles a week so that I have a base on which to build a training platform. (At least I sound like I know what I'm doing!) Oh, wait, I do know what I'm doing! I'm becoming a runner again. I'm becoming a marathoner again. I'm transforming my self and my life.

Virginia does not share hot chocolate!

My company is doing a 30-day meditation challenge, in which everyone who is interested is invited to meditate for 15 minutes a day for 30 days. We have some group sessions on campus, and we receive links to online resources, as well as daily inspirations. This is today's inspiration:

As I'm sure you can imagine, I don't find this particularly inspiring. 

I signed up for this meditation challenge because meditating is part of my transformation ideology. And actually, deliberateness is, too. I want my life to be less hurried, less rushed, less frenzied. But I find that whole sentence above to be confusing. 

I don't want to come back to this day, as if it was the final day of my life. This day has been spent at work, doing workish things. I would rather come back to Saturday, when I bought Captain America the smallest hot chocolate in the world because he wanted two sips of mine and I told him that Virginia does not share hot chocolate! (Also, I asked him, remember that time we went out to dinner and I was starving and you finally took me to get something to eat? And he told me, that's every time we go out to dinner. He understands me so well!)

This is so much more inspiring, because it is so silly! And, Captain America reported that it was THREE sips of hot chocolate! He even got a bonus sip!

This is why I get nothing done at work, even when I don't spend the day in meetings.

I show up at work this morning and immediately attend a meditation session (yes, I work for one of those kinds of companies).

Then I get back to my desk and I sit down to finish listening to the Excel training I started yesterday (by Jeff Lenning--he's crazy enthusiastic about excel. I'm crazy enthusiastic about anything that automates my job and therefore makes my life easier. Or at least allows me to spend less time at work. Unlike writing this blog post.)

Except, I have a friend who's looking for a Conservation Biologist to talk to a high-schooler with leukemia about what her job is like. And I know a Conservation Biologist. So then I spend some time connecting the two of them. The C.B. is currently driving across the country, and may or may not be headed through Spokane, WA, where Cody makes Disney-themed drinks. (I can't make this stuff up. As far as I'm concerned, this might be the only reason to go to Spokane, and I haven't even had one of his drinks.) So, of course, it is basically my civic duty to inform the C.B. of this.

But my new manager wants me to look into getting a company-issued phone, so I start to research that, and I reach out to the woman I'll be shadowing to see if she actually has a company-issued phone, and we get into a whole conversation on when I'll be moving to my new location so I can actually be of some use to my new team.

At the same time, I coordinated a women's group lunch to make sure all of the attendees understand that we have two lunches this week--one with our group and one with another group. Then I had to remove an attendee who TOLD ME LAST MONTH that she wanted to be part of the group, so I added her to everything, and then TOLD ME TODAY that she is too busy. She's an administrative assistant. You'd think she'd have a better understanding of scheduling.

Meanwhile, I'm also taking a Facebook class or something on becoming a Beach Body Coach--which I am killing, by the way--today we are supposed to 1) Make a healthy choice. Meditation it is; 2) Reach out to a friend--nailed it! I've reached out to, and connected, two of them FOR PHILANTHROPIC REASONS, and it's not even lunch; and 3) do something to grow yourself. I guess I could count mediation for this one and then do something else healthy, like not eat out of the snack drawer. If only I could get paid to be this awesome! But, tragically, this isn't really my day job. It's only what I've been doing at my day job.

I might be turning into Marlon Brando. Or not.

Basically this is a post with a lot of pictures. So it's a lot like a children's book, but even more random.

I've lost my voice. Which is generally sub-optimal, but even more so since my instant message communicator at work was causing my Outlook to crash. So basically I had to learn morose code to communicate today. It's a lot like Morse code, except you can also use it to communicate with Grumpy Cat.

(It's a good thing I can entertain myself, since I'll probably have no friends left after I force them all to learn morose code.)

Anyway, a coworker said I sound like Marlon Brando. When I try to talk. With my non-voice. Which I suppose is a step up from yesterday when I sounded like a drowning Muppet.

At any rate, I told said coworker that I was going to take a class at our gym taught by an incredibly enthusiastic 62-year old. This is him playing the role of Cupid on Valentine's Day. Obviously he suffers from low self-esteem.

Coworker says, I don't have the energy to take Cupid's class.

I say, I haven't worked out in a week. I might be turning to mush. Sort of like Marlon Brando when he got old.

Young Marlon Brando was hot. Old Marlon Brando looks like everyone's great-uncle Nelson. Which is fine for the great-uncles of the world, but not so much for a woman.

Career Change: It is hard

Another post, that, for one reason or another, I stored away as a draft.

About six years ago, I graduated from a private university with an MBA in Finance. That I have not used. You see, prior to that I had been an accountant. Being an accountant is very boring, but I liked working with numbers, so I thought finance was a natural transition.

As it turns out, it is much, much harder to move from the world of accounting to the world of finance than really makes any sense at all.

So, I started reaching out to people in finance at my company. They offered the normal suggestions--networking, informational interviews, and taking on project work to gain experience. I've done all of those things. Okay, technically, I have not taken on project work--I've offered my time to a variety of groups, but no one has accepted.

I joined the women's network at my company, the Lean In-style circles offered by my company, and I've participated in a mentor program, all to try to gain exposure to different people, different career options, different options for how I should proceed.

Then, I reached out to someone at my company who has successfully made the transition from accounting to finance. And he had the same advice--namely, informational interviews, project work, and the like. All of the same stuff that hasn't been working for me. He did, however, have some ideas as to what "additional experience" I would need, as well as some of the non-technical barriers to entry. It was actually the most useful conversation I've had on the topic.

While I would like to stay at the company where I'm currently working, I've realized that staying might not take my career in the direction I want to go. I've set up a meeting with a recruiter to see what sort of outside next steps I can take, or what other career options there are for me.

A few weeks ago, I googled how to leave a career in accounting, but most of the advise was directed at people who wanted to leave public accounting--and nearly all of it focused on getting a job in the private sector.

In a conversation with a self-employed friend, she pointed out that women are more likely to say things like "I was very lucky..." and men are more likely to say "I did this..." when talking about how they shaped their career. My company really pushes employees to "own their careers" but it's a little bit of a trap. I've discovered that what they really mean, but don't say, is that they want employees to own their careers within the parameters management prefers.

Unfortunately, I think luck plays a very big part in successful career change. A lot of it seems to be being in the right place at the right time with the right people. I'm still trying to figure out how to make my own luck, but I've stopped working so hard at doing all of the things I'm "supposed" to do--it was too much effort with little payback.

I do have some feelers out there for different prospects, and I've been thinking way more outside the box about what I want to do. I'm trying to make some big changes in my life, which is a little scary, but I also know that I'm more scared of staying put.

The worst Lent EVER

I found the below post in my "draft" file. I'm not sure where I was going with it at the time, but one of the things I'm working on in my Transform campaign is to figure out a food lifestyle that makes me happy, keeps me satiated, and is healthy. It's a lot of work to eat well, because it involves a lot of planning, and I don't particularly like to cook. But I also know that I feel better when I eat well. As Gretchen Rubin, over at The Happiness Project proclaims, one of her personal commandments is to "be Gretchen." Basically, this means that she needs to do what is right for her, not what she "thinks" she should be doing, and not what is right for other people. 

Okay, so here is the actual post:

My CrossFit gym (I REFUSE to call it a "box") is doing what my friend accurately described as The. Worst. Lent. EVER. It's basically this thing where, for 30 days, you can't eat anything fun whatsoever. I'm sure that if I managed to keep my shit together and not stab anyone ("
stabby" is a real emotion if you're from New Jersey...it essentially means angry, but has the colorful implication that someone might end up in a garbage can. Because that's how we roll), I'd actually lose a ton of weight. But I'd be the bitchiest version of myself, and the reality is that I'd probably gain it all back as soon as I stopped.

Energy Drain

At least once a week, you'll see an article on Facebook about getting rid of "toxic friends." But I have sort of the opposite of a toxic friend.

I had a friend who was nice, and sweet, and generous, and always up for anything. When she asked "how are you?" she actually wanted to listen to an answer, instead of just exchanging a brief greeting.

And somehow, I found her exhausting. I would spend a day with her, and I would come home completely depleted, despite the fact that everything that had happened had been fun and pleasant and nice and enjoyable.

For a while, I felt guilty about avoiding this friend. I couldn't pinpoint what the problem was, and I felt bad about not wanting to spend time with someone who was so nice.

In the end, I decided it mattered less WHY this particular relationship was exhausting, and more that it simply was. I would never suggest to someone else that they should spend time with someone they found exhausting, even if that person was nice, so why should I?

I haven't seen this person in over a year, and sometimes I still feel like I should tell her why I "broke up" with her, although to be fair, she hasn't contacted me, either, so maybe the feeling was mutual. In the end, the conclusion I came to, was it was exhausting for me to be around her because I always felt like I needed to be patient, and sweet, and nice, and basically not me. Pretending is exhausting.

Transform

A while ago, probably around December or January, back when everyone was thinking about New Year's resolutions, I read something that resonated with me: a suggestion to pick a one-word theme for the year. Rather than a list of things to do (or not do), pick a theme you wanted to permeate your year. For reasons I still can't articulate, I LOVED this idea, but I couldn't think up a word at the time.

No big deal, I figured. I don't really buy into the idea that you can only make changes to your life at the beginning of the year, and I knew from experience that keeping resolutions is really, really hard. Then, over Mother's Day weekend it hit me: Transform. That was the theme I wanted for my year. So what if my year now ran from Mother's Day to Mother's Day in stead of New Year's Day to December 31? I realized that all of the changes I wanted to make had to do with transforming my life. And the word, transform, sounds so positive, so rejuvenating.

I started my transformation in the most obvious place: sleeping on my husband's side of the bed.

Captain America said, "What are you doing?"
"Transforming my life," I replied.
"Why are you doing it on my side of the bed?" he asked.
"If you recall, this side of the bed USED to be my side" I told him.
"If I recall," he retorted, "you're annoying."

A few weeks ago, I read an article on Facebook (that arena for all things important and cat-video related) about a capsule wardrobe. This was back before I came up with my Word of the Year, but still the idea resonated with me as something I wanted. The idea is that if you put together a wardrobe of your favorite pieces, that all mix-and-match, you'll have a nearly infinite number of outfit combinations without shopping or having an over-packed closet. (Okay, okay, I know, a mathematically finite number, but NOT THE POINT!)

I HATE shopping, and dressing like a grown-up is not my forte, despite my completely Corporate America job as an accountant at a software company. But, I figured, if I don't have to think about what I'm going to wear, getting dressed will be so much easier! Captain America was concerned I'd get tired of wearing the same things over and over (despite the fact that I'm perfectly content to wear my Harry Potter pajamas every day of the week). (I have matching pants. And I bought them at The Wizarding World of Harry Potter when Captain America took me as an anniversary present. He really does love me!)

Captain America was also concerned about what we'd do with all of my other clothes, but I pointed out to him what the blog pointed out to me: most women own a ton of stuff that doesn't quite fit properly, and therefore they rarely or never wear it. I could just get rid of all of this stuff. The rest I put in those giant vacuum bags and stored under my bed. Because in a few months, I'll probably want to update my capsule wardrobe for fall.

I also realized that while I thought I didn't like wearing dresses or skirts, what I didn't like was shaving my legs. I already knew that I didn't like shaving my legs, but I didn't associate it with my perceived dislike of dresses until on a whim in Target I bought a pair of tights. As a kid, I LOVED tights. As it turns out, I still love tights.

So here I am in one of my capsule closet outfits. I didn't take this picture until the end of the day because I thought it was a little monochromatic, but I received so many compliments at work. One woman even told me I looked like a model! (To be fair, taking selfies is not my forte, either, and so you can't tell, but I'm wearing 4-inch heels. I'm pretty sure that this is what inspired the "model" comment.)