mila | permission to be stupid ... granted

at nineteen i decided i knew what i was doing and nobody could really tell me what to do.  i thought i was the shizat and my parents were just too old skool.  at twenty-one i looked back and thought ... "wow, i was dumb.  i knew nothing THEN!  i know what i'm doing NOW though".  i must have hit that evaluation semi-annually until i was 27.  i'm a little slow sometimes.  at twenty seven i knew i was growing up coz by then i thought ... "i really AM dumb and slow!  i STILL don't know what i'm doing!"

twenty seven was a good revelation year but despite the knowledge of how short on life experience i was, i was still afraid to LOOK dumb.  i tried to pull off "intelligent" and "competent" constantly (which btw can be way exhausting) but for the most part i was walking around caring a lot about how people perceived me.

twenty nine was a vicious year.  i think it is for a lot of girls.  something about leaving your twenties and crossing into the point-of-no-return-thirties was enough to make me miserable for a year literally up until the night before my birthday.  any kind of meaningful evaluation might have been put on hold that year and replaced by the age obsession.  the silly thing is that i woke up on the day of my 30th bday feeling no different coz technically i was thirty long before then (29 and 6 months rounds up to 30 right?).  in fact, it was just a number and just another day and nobody would believe me when i said i was thirty anyway.  since then my age has been a badge of honor and my self eval process started again.

thirty-two and i realized i'll NEVER know what i'm doing and every day is an experiment and i should just have fun with it.  and then just a few weeks ago i thought, there are old ladies out there whose clothes are stuck in a generation long gone, women who will stop anyone to ask for directions to the exit out of a parking lot they've been circling for half an hour and grannies who are still writing checks at the grocery store.  all these women have either stopped caring about people's perceptions, never cared or just decided that they are fine the way they are and are happy about it.  whatever it is, i wanted in on that.

they say that men hit their midlife crisis between the ages of 40 and 50; a period when they realize where they are, the passing of youth and the oncoming aging process.  different people react differently to this awakening.  could it be that since women don't generally age as gracefully as men do that our midlife crisis is between 30 and 40?  maybe it's just me... but have i just hit that?  coz a few weeks ago i was ok with not knowing everything and didn't care who knew.  in fact, it's a relief to be able to look silly, ask questions without a care and get answers!  i'm not entirely prepared to have my fashion dated and frozen yet though but i'm gosh darn i'm getting there!

here's some photos from my new project SELF-INFLICTED.  me, working on getting better and teaching myself to know.