Monday, April 20, 2009

When it’s nice not to be “yourself”

Tasks Playing Dress Up (#85) & Drink Pink Champagne (#37)
I played dress up for the for the first time this week while drinking pink champagne. There were no formal costumes, and the bubbly really hued a deep merlot…but after you’re thirty, colors start bleeding and you’re already avoiding the lighting and cumbersomeness of dressing rooms.
The combination, like Fun Dip and Road Trips as a child, sent my inhibitions into a tizzy. My senses perked awake, and the burden of perpetuating my normal practical approach to my appearance evaporated.
I wasn’t myself.
No, I was Bubbly…hyper…ready to get somewhere…excited about what energy I might bring to the destination. I wanted to be seen. It wasn’t as if my choice on the outfit involved deliberate selection. What I was out to do was to generating a feeling of upending my typical calculation White wig, a shirt long enough to function as a dress, but short enough for people to wander (is that a dress or a?) some black knee boats, and a mood that floated. That sparkled. That did not doubt or question or leave room for other’s opinions to stamp it with approval.
Here’s the thing, when I put on that wig, the spunky, confident, I don’t-give-a-fig-what-you-think-cause-I-know-I-am-hot K emerged. The kind that doesn’t rely on being noticed in order to sense her inherent worthiness.

More on this theme later: the trap of getting noticed.

For now, I remember that wig, that champagne, as a fond celebration of all the Ks that have been---that critter who always forgot to pee before beginning the road trip---and is, the professional who smirks imaging that the wig might come in handy to facilitate other tasks on my list: ask a guy out on a date, make a toast in a bar, go skinny dipping…

And while we’re at it, a little champagne doesn’t hurt either.
Check out other 101 Task Insights…

3 comments:

  1. Kind of makes me wonder if I should wear a mask at times. I believe in being true to and of myself, but I can do that with a mask, right? :)

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  2. I hope you go skinny dipping IN THE WIG. Or is that one of those oxymorons?

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  3. Gosh! We should all get together for a fun weekend somewhere soon!

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PhD in clinical psychology. Single. Pushing 30. Suffering Whiplash from the Roaming 20s...Who am I? What do I want? Where do I belong? Welcome to my self-induced treatment, a testament that we can all be a little crazy in our search for significance.