Reinvention Redux

I’ll begin here by saying that the choice belongs to each of us. Those of us who wear a gray sweatshirt because we love the color should rock this style forever. If we do so, to not want to flip our fashion script throughout life can be our free choice.

What happened in my life points to the belief I have in self-reinvention and not wanting to remain in the same place until I’m carried out.

Change can often first start with our new wardrobe choices as the jet fuel for taking off with life goals. Suddenly I thought: “In with the new. Out with this old.” Even though it’s not yet New Year’s Eve.

Round about when I turned 50 years old I posted a blog entry here along the lines of the Top 10 Style Recommendations Post-5o. Today I routinely break those rules.

Exhibit A: I’ve started to wear miniskirts again.

Exhibit B: I’ve returned to wearing light denim jeans.

The reality: Clothing conformity at a certain age just isn’t fun if you ask me. It’s boring and can drag us down. There’s going to be no “gray cashmere sweater” for me like the rule requires for a mature lady.

The point at which a woman goes from older to old is exactly the time when she gives up on herself. We’re not old until we’ve given up.

Even if you don’t identify as a woman or girl I dare say giving up on yourself post-50 is not the way to go either.

As like Shakespeare wrote: “Cowards die many a time before their death. The valiant only taste of death but once.”

Giving up is the way to keep dying a little more every day in my book. Though like I began this blog entry it’s not always a question that we’ve given up.

It’s that we’re content to carry on comfortable in the same outfits. Without changing up our look.

I however would like to request that followers consider this: Risking change with your style as the approach to getting in the mindset to take life risks.

As at the end of the day the clothes come off. The outfit you didn’t like can go to a sartorial heaven.

I think choosing what clothes to wear is like alchemy: We can turn the plain and simple into a 24K ensemble.

Have fun with how you dress! I like to say that the goal is to Enjoy Life.

And we each of us don’t have to be or act or dress outrageously to Enjoy Life. Sometimes rocking a white shirt and black pants can be enough.

Exhibit C: Carolina Herrera.

The Art of Intentional Dressing

The book above I had wanted to review and lost track of whether I did or not. It’s become my favorite guide to dressing in clothes.

Erin Walsh the personal stylist to celebrities outlines step-by-step her CREATE method: Using Clarity Ritual Editing Alignment Truth and Expansion.

Walsh quotes Gabby Bernstein as to the four simple question to ask ourselves before getting dressed and going out in the morning:

Who do I want to be today?

How do I want to feel today?

What do I want to give today?

What do I want to receive today?

I recommend buying this book as the cost is well worth it. Thought it can be checked out of a library too.

One part of the book I’m not keen on: lighting candles and using scent. I think candles should be used for decoration only. And I’m not a fan of perfume.

The subtitle of the book gets at why I’m fond of the method as it’s “Your Essential Style Guide to Manifesting a Magnetic Life.”

The beauty is that how we dress and the fashion we choose to wear changes throughout our time here. There’s no need to cringe at those tutus you wore to a night club in the 1980s. Or balk at those strait jacket suits you wore to a corporate office job in the 1990s.

It’s empowering if you ask me to know that you and I don’t have to dress in the same way forever.

More in a coming blog entry about fashion faux pas that I’ve begun using to my advantage.

Dressing the Resistance

The book above Dressing the Resistance: The Visual Language of Protest through History should be read. I recommend buying the book so will quote from it.

Per the back cover of the guide:

Dressing the Resistance celebrates how we use clothing, fashion, and costume to ignite activism and fight for radical change.

To quote LGBTQ+ activist and drag performer Desmond is Amazing: “To me, activism is simple: activism is kindness, respect, and love.”

I’ve always thought that 100s of people dressed in gray hoodies walking down the street would be an effective means of protest. Better yet in red hoodies or dark blue hoodies.

In the book above the author touched on how persons who want to convert others to their cause were told to exercise and care about their appearance. To wit they dress in polo shirts and khakis.

As when your persona is palatable and relatable you’ll attract followers apparently This appears to be the reality.

The book above can be checked out of the library if you can’t buy it.

Coming up blog entries on how to use clothes to power us through the stages of our lives..

Newest Direction of Blog

I’m going to take the blog in a new direction again. Focus on what I stand for, not what I’m against.

My aim is to focus on what’s going right. To give an action plan listing solutions. Not keep reiterating what’s not right in society. To counter what’s going on with my ideas and insight for positive change.

Not give airtime to what other people are doing. Only highlight the efforts of those of us making a positive difference.

The expression is: If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it does it make a sound? By not responding to the ones who attack us we neutralize their effect

At the end of the day I simply want followers to have a good time reading this blog. To amuse everyone as well as make reader think in a new way.

The world could use more joy and optimism. This is what I want to deliver.

Seeking Justice

I would like to ask the question: What is Justice? The online dictionary defines justice as right action.

Too I think it does a disservice to parrot that being kind and caring isn’t good enough. The way I see it the best way to “dismantle oppressive systems” is not only to fight injustice at its core. The other method of creating justice lies in how we treat each other in our relationships.

If you ask me it won’t do to judge and demonize people for their efforts in either fighting or not fighting injustice.

Love is Justice.

Recovery is Justice.

Compassion is Justice.

Seeing how each of us treats each other as justice is the difference.

Vowing not to follow along in what the haters in society tell us to believe about everyone is critical.

We each of us also need to be kinder to ourselves when the outside voices of critics attack us sight unseen.

I say that people can change and this is a good thing.

At 20 or 22 or even at 30 or 32 we’re tasked with attending to our own struggle to overcome the lemons that life handed us. Whether in the form of illness, disability, being born on the wrong side of the highway, or whatever.

I’ll give my own story to highlight that judging each other isn’t the way to go.

Today I often think of my earliest attempt at seeking justice. In 1988 I sought justice for myself in terms of economic security. By fighting for the right to have two things normal people take for granted they can have: Renting their own apartment to live in and working at a full-time job.

I think it’s synchronicity not just a coincidence that after I recovered for over 15 years I’ve helped customers create resumes and conduct job searches at my job. Upwards of 85 percent of those people received job offers not just interviews.

This is to say that as we get older each of us holds in our hands the power to not only transform our lives and heal ourselves. We can create positive change for others.

So I urge followers not to despair if you’re ratted out as not doing enough for the cause of justice. Each of us taking whatever right action we can is wonderful resistance to the status quo.

There’s no shame at all in seeking to better ourselves first if we’re not in a place in our lives to agitate for everyone’s rights.

We are good people doing the best we can with what we were given.

A friend gave me a bookmark with this quote: Never forget the difference you’ve made.

I firmly think each of us is making a positive difference simply by acting true to ourselves.

Individuality is Justice too.

The Conjuring of America

The above book The Conjuring of America is a celebration of the Black Women’s Magic that kept Americans of all colors healthy and healed through centuries of oppressive backlash to the emerging civil rights of newly freed African Americans.

Today I think we can certainly trust each other to be the agents of change that our elected leaders cannot be.

The Conjuring of America reveals the vibrant life-affirming, giving, and sustaining roles of Black American women. They held the power to fight injustice in their hands as healers, midwives, market women, and Candy Ladies.

Their story is America’s narrative writ with the beauty of faith, perseverance, and community. I was taken particularly with how one Black chef at her own restaurant served food to Black and White civil rights activists in a secret upper room where they could come together to plan protests out of sight of the police.

I recommend that everyone read The Conjuring of America. The forgotten stories of these Black women and their Magic brought to light in the book give me hope that as has been said: “Resistance is self-care.”

For those of us who have no interest in conforming to business-as-usual this book is the playbook for beating the system.

In a society where the typical metaphor has been that the playing field isn’t level I think the one way to level the playing field is to first create change for ourselves. Then turn around to help others get a fair shot at their goals.

Coming up more ideas on how to conjure our own healing.

Harper’s Bazaar Obsessions Issue 2026

Per the editors of Harper’s Bazaar:

“Obsession has always been at the center of fashion…This issue is about those kinds of obsessions: the ones that fuel our sense of identity, our sense of purpose, our sense of self.”

I ask you: Can being obsessed with something be empowering?

I think after reading the book The Conjuring of America that there’s a definite link between the physical and spiritual.

What better way to embody this twin-ship than through dressing up in the style that speaks to us. In the clothes that ignite our desire to be alive fully in our skin and and nobody else’s.

Pre-Covid I had been mired in an existential crisis about what my style “should” be. Taking the Visual Therapy quiz proved a short-lived exercise in how to dress.

Finding out about Allison Bornstein’s Three Word Method changed everything. I could see that how you and I dress cannot be prescribed by an outsider or even a person who calls themselves an expert.

Often I looked back on the girl I was in college in the 1980s who dressed in head-to-toe black long before it was the trend.

The idea that an obsession can fuel our sense of self is at the heart of reinvention. How we dress is the mirror of our mood and yes our sense of identity, purpose, and self at the time we’re living in.

The core of who we are doesn’t change. I don’t think that it does. Yet we can take on a new persona and new worldview as we get older. Which is a good thing.

Our fashion changes because we are not the same person we were at 20.

Today I’ve gotten on a carousel of chasing color. In vibrant pairings like melon jeans and a green top. Pink and red come together too. I wear a green sweatshirt and yellow sneakers that I liken to reggae colors.

This is how all of us grow and change and better ourselves over the years:

Through whatever our new obsessions are that spark the joy we can’t live without.

I liken dressing up and walking down the street as being on The Runway to Resilience. For how we fashion ourselves can help us heal.

Coming up I’ll review a book that was too riveting to put down. I broke my vow to read only fluff like beauty and design.

The Conjuring of America exposed how the ubiquitous blue jeans that everyone wears today had their birth as clothes that enslaved Africans wore on plantations.

Expressing ourselves through how we dress is a unique kind of magic.

The Conjuring of America centers how 400 years of Black Women’s Magic was at the heart of American history.

Going Left

One other reason I had in titling the URL Girl on the Left is that there’s no one right way to think feel live act dress and love. Just the way that is right for you. And the way that is right for me.

Left of the Dial is a lifestyle not a political screed at the end of the day.

In the 1980s I was a disc jockey on FM radio in college. The music we played on-air was called Left of the Dial because it was alternative.

I happen to think that there’s beauty in everyone living on earth being unique. We have so much to give each other in terms of our humanity which is sacred.

I often write elsewhere about these components of lifestyle: How each of us thinks, feels, lives, acts, dresses, and loves. The fact that how we do these things is an individual approach is wonderful I think.

Pierce your nose .Ink your body with tattoos. Get locs. Or do nothing like this.

Bake brownies for your kids in Sandpoint, Idaho. Have an ordinary life. Watch TV. Scroll social media.

It’s all good. However you and I express ourselves in living our lives is phenomenal.

Some of us don’t live in the mainstream. Others have the white picket fence life.

Either way honoring embracing and accepting each other’s uniqueness is called for.

I’ve written this before so I must sound like a broken record.

Enjoy the remainder of the summer.

National Self-Care Month

September is National Self-Care Month.

The Self-care challenge for the month is to engage in one act of self-care each day.

Self-care can be simple yet not easy to attend to. In a society that doesn’t prioritize the well-being of citizens (it prioritizes that we buy things to feel good or improve ourselves).

I say that self-care can be as simple as looking in the mirror and telling ourselves: “I feel good. I am good.” Say this three times out loud in the morning before going out.

Self care that might not be simple is changing our mindset from negative to positive. Too in not expecting ourselves to do the right things every day.

I for one have become okay with wearing regular blue jeans. Who needs to wear a ball gown skirt to go see a movie?

Right. Easing up on expecting ourselves to be perfect is the real deal for National Self-Care Month if you ask me.

Like a woman I knew told me decades ago: “Perfection is a myth because it implies there can be no growth.”

I say too to listen to the Cyndi Lauper song “Good Enough.” As really good enough is often good enough.

Coming up a second take on why I titled this URL Girl on the Left. It isn’t primarily in terms of politics. It’s a lifestyle more than anything.

What Beauty Is

On the opposite experience a woman who is attractive gets hit on regularly. And not often by genuinely decent men.

This doesn’t seem like an atrocity. Only it reinforces the reality that there’s a standard notion of what beauty is. And that those of us who don’t fit into this paint-by-numbers definition of beauty are ugly. Not worth asking on a date.

We need to think of what beauty is in terms of the non-physical. I don’t like that our faces and bodies are the first thing others see and form an impression of. Within 7 seconds apparently!

Justice is beauty.

Compassion is beauty.

Self-expression is beauty.

Recovery is beauty.

Identity is beauty.

And so on. If we human beings could just see inside the persona to who each other is in our internal makeup that would be lovely.

There’s minor deviations that can cause us to feel poorly about our bodies too. Irrespective of what others think.

Only this self-perception is often the echo of those outside voices crowning you and me as either beautiful or not beautiful.

I say: Our bodies are maps of where we’ve been in our lives. I have kitchen scars from burning my arms taking dishes out of the oven. Today I can say to myself: I was cooking a delicious meal. So be it having scars.

What I think is beautiful you might not think is beautiful.

Either way seeing this beauty as it appears to us is a way to take joy in life.

A dandelion shooting out of the crack in a concrete sidewalk can be beautiful. A struggle that we’re experiencing or have overcome can be a thing of beauty too.

I’ll end here with this point: We should not judge what each of us finds beautiful. This is the human condition: To enjoy the beauty we see.