I was at work yesterday steaming this gorgeous vintage dress with pink aluminum beads and rhinestone crystals, and I asked my boss to tell me the story of the dress’s brand: Kramer.
Kramer, originally a jewelry company, dabbled into clothing when the creator decided that the style at the time wasn’t extravagant enough to match his jewelry.
Thus was born the gorgeous vintage dress with pink aluminum beads and rhinestone crystals.
And I thought to myself, wow, that’s how I should be living my life right now.
Not necessarily designing clothing to highlight my extravagant jewelry (although that is definitely a priority when I dress), but creating an image that compliments the sparkle of our personality.
So if life isn’t reflected in the sparkle of my accessories? Redesign it.
And that’s what precisely what I’m going to start doing.
I first moved to California with the intention and plan to pursue my magazine.
The city hasn’t been as glamorous and glittery as I thought it would be and while I’ve learned a lot about myself and grown in ways I never imagined possible, I’m still missing the fundamental purpose as to why I came out here in the first place: my magazine.
I’ve got ideas, I’ve got passions, and yet I’m too busy making a living to express them in a way that’s meaningful.
I thought it was all part of the adult experience to move out of your hometown and see the world, and scramble to make ends meet for the sake of “learning how to be an adult.”
I felt pressured to seek an identity somewhere else and that in and of itself made me doubt who I am.
Scrambling after identities, we become alienated from what is true about ourselves and the world.
-Meg Jay, The Defining Decade
My self-esteem dropped, I became obsessed with figuring out “what was wrong with me”, and once I removed the pressure of “should” from my world (“setting up a false dichotomy between either meeting an ideal or being a failure, pitting us against our own self interest”), I realized that I was in the wrong place.
According to Meg Jay, life is built out of person, place, and thing. In other words, who we are with, where we live, and what we do for a living.
I’m seriously considering the idea of returning to a place I call home. A place that has always supported me and allowed me to express who I really am on the inside. A place that has the potential to help me create something that will allow my sparkle to shine, just like Kramer.
The glitter and glam lies in a place where I feel loved, appreciated, and accepted.
So it’s about time I make like Kramer and create an outfit that matches the sparkle of my accessories.
And that may mean relocating to the place that gave me the sparkle in the first place.
