Wrapped up a long week by having some drinks and food with friends. That lifted my spirits a great deal.

I have bought a ton of clothes lately – A TON – and it’s been expensive, though I did it while telling myself it’s okay because I’m good at rationalizing shit. Reasons like, “It’s necessary due to wardrobe attrition,” or, “Everything I am buying are classic wardrobe staples,” and, “I got everything on sale!” (BTW, when I buy something on sale it’s a good fucking sale because I inherited my grandmother’s power shopping genes). I was telling all of this to a friend of mine tonight, feeling somewhat sheepish at just how much shopping I have done, and he asked me the most unexpected question.

“How did it make you feel?”

Blink… I responded after being caught off guard, “It made me feel pretty.” This response startled me almost as much as the question because I suddenly had a profound realization.

I have valiantly tried to offset an onslaught of overwhelming apathy/near-depression for the last month or more. One of the things that has legitimately helped has been adding to my new wardrobe. Because it makes me feel pretty. Fashion isn’t something engineered to make us feel bad about ourselves. Sometimes it can feel that way as a result of seeing advertising for fashion, but I see it as something far better. I feel empowered by fashion. Exercising this empowerment over the last month or so has been the one thing keeping me afloat.

I didn’t really piece all this together until tonight. The friend I was talking to is a stylist and was meticulously snipping away at my hair as we talked. I had decided last weekend that I was sick of not being happy with my hair. I wanted to be empowered by it, not held hostage by it. So I decided that Great Clips can go fuck itself after the last two weed whacker specials they did on my coif and I hit up my friend. I wanted to take control of my hair and though I had never thought of having him do it, I knew he would be perfect for the job.

I’m not entirely thrilled with some aspects of my life right now for one reason or another. Some of the reasons are rational and some are the product of my wonky mind, but the effect they have on my quality of life is very real. I stumbled into this creative, semi self-medicating, empowering outlet of clothes shopping quite by accident and those same qualities fueled the cravings that kept me at it. It was a far less conscious drive than the choice I made about my hair, but it was exactly the same thing. I wanted to be in control of something in my life in a constructive manner that would also make me feel better about me. Was I less than totally financially prudent in how far I let it go? Yes. Am I glad I did it? Absolutely.

The moral of this story is that I’ve learned a bit more about myself and made some solid wardrobe investments… Most importantly, I feel pretty, which makes a world of difference in how I feel about my world in general.

I’ve been trying the audio dictation features of the new iOS 5 on my phone it’s been really weird. My creative flow just doesn’t seem to go in the same manner as typing the words out and seeing them in my mind and on the page. I’ve always been a much more visual person than I have been an auditory person, when it comes to expressing myself. I’ve always had to see problems or situations in my mind before I can truly understand them.

I’m also finding that there’s also a certain amount of pressure involved. Knowing that some device is waiting for me to finish my thoughts and listening to me stumble over the word selection is rather disconcerting. I don’t know why but I’ve always had an easier time being off-the-cuff in informal conversation, but when it comes to expressing what I truly feel I don’t feel like I can actually express that words spoken aloud. There’s a certain amount of complexity to what feels like a process of cultivation that I use when selecting the words to express myself. Even now as I’m aware of this, I’m finding it very difficult to pacing myself a little bit more slowly than I do when I talk somebody casually.

In Star Trek you always see people recording their logs and such visually by dictation and although that works better for storytelling it doesn’t really work the same way in real life. At least for me, that is. I’m very curious to see just how widespread this form of data entry will become as people are able to use it through devices like the iPhone 4S. Will become ubiquitous and a natural way of communicating with each other and our own technology in the future? Or will it remain the stuff of science fiction?

In case you were wondering, I recorded this using Siri on my iPhone 4S. There was a certain amount of editing involved, nothing too complex, as I couldn’t bring myself to share the direct results with anybody.

Haven’t been able to sleep well for weeks. I can’t figure out what my defect is. This has been going on for as long as I can remember, though. Insomnia is my oldest friend and enemy.