relaunch: reborn

Just shy of two years into this side quest, I decided to create a website, a return to blogging (kind of), a place to share resources, a way to get the thoughts out my head.

I’ve had my ups and downs with social media this year, watching it become more and more toxic as it prioritizes monetization of creators and ways for social media empire owners to become richer. There’s censorship of certain posts and scraping of data. And ultimately, there’s no way I could comprehensively convey my thoughts in a character-limited caption.

So here we are. It feels scary to be vulnerable whereas in my teens and early 20s, I was more likely to overshare on various blogging platforms, MySpace, and AOL Instant Messenger away messages. Now, I’ve become much more guarded, slightly embarrassed by the follies of youth. ('I’m a Virgo so my natural state is “embarrassed” anyway.) And at the same time, I feel the pull to share my new interests, my lessons learned, my progress, my ideas.

I once had a professor in my design and arts college tell us we learn more from our failures than we do our successes. We have the opportunity to problem solve, be creative, pivot to new ideas. And ultimately, this space is for my failures and for my growth.

I hope to capitalize on 20+ years of thrifting experience, over a decade in fashion retail, a degree in design theory and art history, more degrees in public health and social work, and my numerous failures and growing pains to share some of those experiences, talk about my secondhand/sustainability starting points and how I incorporate it all into my life, throw out some ideas, create space to share resources, and find collaboration and community.

I come to this knowing there are plenty of people doing more and cooler work in this space. I am by no means an expert. But as a rookie fumbling along, maybe we can all share our learning curves and lessons learned.

Welcome to (be) reborn.