My Wardrobe, Myself

For the past decade-plus, I’ve been selecting a word or theme each January to help guide my life as I navigate my way through the year. Some of the words that I’ve chosen in the past include:  simplicity, joy, deliberate, balance, peace, essential, freedom, enough, less, and lightness. For 2023, I selected the word “clarity,” and I chose “courage” as my theme for 2024. I’ve often felt that each yearly theme has naturally evolved into the next one and that previous themes have continued to impact me even after their official time had passed.

Today’s post has been on my mind for quite some time, but I’ve struggled to actually sit down to write it. Doing so has required both clarity and courage, as well as a commitment to my 2025 word, which I’ll share later in this essay, along with my reasons for choosing it. But first I’d like to debrief how I did with my 2024 theme of “courage.” To do so, I’ll use the same headers that I did when I first introduced that theme last year.

Courage with My Wardrobe and How I Dress

When I shared my 2024 courage theme, I wrote that I lacked the confidence to just wear what I like when it runs far afield from current trends and what others around me are putting on their bodies. I indicated that the women who I admired most sartorially were those who knew what clothing and styles they liked and fearlessly wore them. I stated that I wanted to wear all black in the summer sometimes and stick to my favorite pieces like straight-leg jeans, long toppers, and striking silver jewelry.

I feel like I did a great job with dressing courageously in 2024. I continued to keep an outfit journal and jot down everything I wore and how I felt in each of my ensembles. That practice allowed me to continue honing my style preferences and identify what I didn’t feel good wearing. I got better at noticing when an outfit was a “dud” before I left the house wearing it, as I tuned in more acutely to my inner voice and the way I felt when I put something on.

The epiphany that I got last February (courtesy of reader Sally from St. Paul) about being more selective about what I wore versus what I chose to buy has also helped me to dress more courageously. I’ve been able to embrace my style preferences more fully and honor them both when I shop and when I put my outfits together. I’ve still made a few purchasing mistakes since that time, but my shopping success percentage has increased considerably by holding higher standards for what I buy and keep. I’ve also come to trust my own instincts more and not listen as much to the opinions of others.

Courage in My Relationships

In my post last year, I wrote about being a “people-pleaser,” overly agreeable, and codependent in my relationships and wanting to be more authentic in how I relate to those in my life. I wanted to feel freer to be myself and speak up more about my feelings and opinions. While I don’t feel that I did as well on this front as with dressing more courageously, I do feel like some progress was made. But it has looked more like stepping back in some relationships and recognizing the lack of possibility for increased connection and growth there.

I’m not any closer to my family members than I was a year ago, but I feel that I’m less “triggered” by them now. I have come to more fully realize that it’s not my fault that I lack closeness to them and it doesn’t mean that there’s something wrong with me. I’ve done much better at not trying to earn love from people that are never going to love me the way I’d ultimately like them to no matter what I do. I still keep in touch with my parents on a regular basis, but I’m less codependent with them and I don’t interpret their words and actions to mean something about me nearly as much as I used to.

I feel that I’m less attached to outcomes in my communications with everyone in my life, which has helped me to experience less pain in my relationships. I’m not sure that what I’m sharing here is directly related to courage, but perhaps it did take courage for me to behave differently and shift my perspective and expectations. I hope to continue to evolve in this respect in 2025 and beyond. I know that I have just as much right to be who I am and to express my feelings as everyone else, so I need to continue to be myself and know that I’m okay regardless of how others act towards me.

Courage in Trying New Things

I wrote that I wanted to venture outside of my comfort zone more often and meet new people. While I’ve continued to attend the weekly trivia nights that I started going to with my husband almost a year and a half ago, I didn’t get involved in many new activities. I also didn’t take any new classes or join any new groups, but I have done some volunteering in my community. That’s something that I’d like to increase this year, and I also want to recommit to expanding my social horizons and embracing new learning opportunities.

I would like this year to be all about trying new things and broadening my horizons, and that’s going to require courage to confront my longstanding social anxiety. But dressing how I want and being less of a people-pleaser will also help me when I’m trying new things and meeting new people, as I’ll be being more true to myself in those situations. I will continue to carry my courage theme forward with me throughout 2025, even as I will be focusing on my new theme for this year.

My 2025 Theme and Why I Chose It

As last year drew to a close, I started to give a lot of thought to what I wanted my word for 2025 to be. I listened to Gretchen Rubin’s podcast debriefing her and her sister’s 2024 words and introducing their new words. As I listened to their 2025 words and those of various listeners (also covered in this article), I jotted down multiple possibilities that resonated with me. I must have written at least fifteen words on a sheet of paper, but I wasn’t sure which one would rise to the top.

I also attended the annual late December “Burning Bowl and White Stone” church service (briefly described on this page) that’s been helpful to me over the years with releasing the closing year and creating possibility for the new year. During that service, I was open to whatever word would come to me during the exercises and meditations. When a particular word popped into my mind, I knew it was the right one to guide my life journey in 2025.

My 2025 word is: Openness.

I see “openness” as a continuation of my 2024 “courage” theme in some ways. When I wrote about courage last year, one thing I stated was that I felt I had gotten into a rut in terms of how I spent my time. Like many older adults, I’ve become set in my ways and tend to engage in the same types of activities – with the same people – over and over again. But as the old saying from Thomas Jefferson goes,

“If you want something you’ve never had, you must be willing to do something you’ve never done.”

I’ve increasingly not been willing to try and do new things, yet I also lament the fact that my life can tend to feel like a “broken record.” Not only has it been difficult for me to try new things, it’s also challenging for me to stop doing things that have become deeply ingrained in my lifestyle and my psyche. In order for me to break out of my rut, I’ll need to be courageous with both beginnings and endings. I want my life to be different, so I need to be willing to make different – and sometimes difficult – choices.

It’s Time for a Change…

Which brings me to the topic of this blog… I’ve been blogging now for fourteen years, but most of my current readers found me through my fourth blog, Recovering Shopaholic, which I wrote from 2013 through 2017. That blog began as a one-year project, but I continued it after gaining a relatively wide audience and feeling like I was adding value to those who struggled with compulsive shopping, wardrobe management, and personal style. But after over four years of sharing my personal journey on those fronts, I became burned out and stopped blogging for almost a year before I came back with a more generally-focused blog called Full Life Reflections.

Interestingly, although I initially enjoyed writing about a much wider range of topics on that new blog, I ended up veering back into my previous “wheelhouse” of addressing wardrobe-related subjects after a couple of years of my new venture. Thus, I rebranded the blog as My Wardrobe, Myself in July 2021. That felt like the right way to go at the time, and I was reinvigorated as a blogger for a while. Although I had a smaller audience than during my heyday with Recovering Shopaholic, I still felt like I was helping people through my writing, and I enjoyed focusing on wardrobe, shopping, and style once again.

Well, as you’ve probably noticed, my posting frequency has decreased considerably, to the point where sometimes an entire month would go by between posts. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to publish new content; I just wasn’t sure what to write about, and I often ended up either scrapping posts that I’d started or taking seemingly forever to finish and publish an essay. Whereas writing used to come naturally to me in a sort of “flow state,” it has felt like I was pushing a boulder up a hill to complete a post (including this one!).

I’m not sure if I’ve said all I want to say about my key content areas or if I’m just temporarily uninspired. I’m also unsure if I should pivot again to another focus area, be it narrow or broad, or if perhaps my time as a blogger is drawing to a close. This state of uncertainty is familiar to me in various areas of my life, which is why I selected “clarity” as my word for 2023. Sadly, however, that clarity didn’t come, so I mostly just continued on in my life as I had been, for lack of a viable alternative path.

I Finally Got Some Clarity

While I didn’t receive the type of clarity I’d hoped for in 2023, the haze of my life did abate to some degree late last year. It was then that I came to realize that it’s time to at least put this blog on pause. It’s hard for me to say that I’m stopping it forever, as that might not end up being the case, but it’s clear to me that I need to take a step back now. I know that I’ve been posting so infrequently that it seems like I’ve already been stepping back from the blog, but it’s still been taking up a lot of space in my mind. I often feel a sense of urgency to create new posts, and I also feel guilty when I haven’t been able to make that happen with any sort of regularity.

I need the “clearing” of taking blogging off my plate, just like I did way back in 2018, when I stopped writing Recovering Shopaholic. At that time, I didn’t know when or if I would return to blogging, but I needed to do what was right for me. I feel quite the same today almost seven years (!) later. It was interesting for me to read that part of my reason for stopping that blog was that I felt the need to minimize the proportion of my life that was dedicated to clothes, shopping, and style, as that’s exactly how I feel today. I don’t think the constant analysis and introspection of my wardrobe is good for my ongoing recovery effort. I need to broaden my horizons and spend more time and energy on other things.

I continue to be a recovering shopaholic. As with other types of addictions or compulsions, there isn’t necessarily an endpoint at which we’re “over” the problem and no longer struggle. Although I’ve been embarrassed to reveal this, I’ve had many ups and downs along my ongoing recovery journey. There have been times when I felt like I might be able to call myself recovered, but if I let down my guard too much, my all-too-familiar coping mechanism of over-shopping would rear its ugly head once again.

Sometimes the relapses would be short and small, while other times they were more significant and protracted. I felt ashamed to reveal any of this to my readers because, after all, I started Recovering Shopaholic way back in January 2013 and had been able to diligently stick to a clothing budget for the four years of my writing that blog. But when my accountability to the internet at large was done, it became harder for me to stay on the straight and narrow, which resulted in those ups and downs that I mentioned above.

It’s Not About the Clothes

I believe that my shopping problem isn’t really about the clothes, and it never has been. It runs much deeper than that, and even the best shopping and wardrobe management tips and strategies aren’t going to ameliorate my struggles. Those tips and strategies are valuable for me, and I hope they’ve been for you as well, but I need to turn away from the closet and toward my life at large now. I need to be open to new experiences, new challenges, new ways of connecting with others, and new ways of making a difference in the world.

I will turn the big 6-0 in 2026, and I don’t want to reach that milestone birthday with the same primary challenges as I have today. I want to more deeply experience life in the moment and worry less about what I’m wearing when I do so. I’ll probably still want to write, as I’m a writer at heart, but I’m not sure what that will look like and when or if I might want to share my writing with the world again. It’s also possible that I might want to engage in other forms of content creation, such as podcasting or video. I know very little about those worlds at present, but I want to be open to whatever avenues I might be inspired to pursue (hence the openness theme).

What’s Next and How to Keep in Touch with Me

I don’t know what’s next for my creative path, but one thing I want to do is consolidate my writing and pare things down. I remember other bloggers who curated their content to present their very best work to the world, and I’d like to do the same. I may even choose to produce additional edited anthologies of my essays, like my existing books, Unshopping and End Closet Chaos. I could see myself potentially coming back with a blog much like my friend Terra Trevor’s Earth and the Great Sea Journal, where she writes both short and long essays about a wide range of topics and even shares one of her photos from time to time. If that’s the case, I may simply rebrand this blog as I already did once back in 2021.

If I decide to get back to blogging or do another creative venture, I’ll be sure to let you know, either here or on my personal website (which hasn’t been updated in years, but might become my internet “home” in the future). If you want to stay in touch with me, or if you’re ever in the San Diego area and want to meet up, feel free to send me a note via my contact page on any of my websites (this one, Recovering Shopaholic, or my personal page). I’m mentioning all three, as I might potentially consolidate them into a single site for the sake of simplicity.

Closing Words

It would be much easier to close this post if I knew whether I’d be back or not, but waiting for that level of clarity didn’t pan out for me and I don’t want to continue on in limbo. I also don’t want to keep going on in a lackluster manner or just stop posting altogether, like I’ve seen a number of other bloggers and content creators do. Those who have stuck with me for years and years deserve better than that.

I’m eternally grateful to everyone who has read my words, whether you started doing so a decade-plus ago or last year. I enjoyed getting to know those who have commented over the years, but I’m also thankful for those silent readers who never chimed in but enjoyed and benefited from my words. It’s been so meaningful for me to have this little corner of the internet on which I’ve gotten to share my thoughts with readers far and wide. It’s been a true blessing for me, and I thank you for your time and attention.

As I sign off for now, I send you love and positive wishes for all your life endeavors. Be well  – and always remember that you’re valuable and you matter!