personal style stuff

 Sometimes when I'm bored or sad or lonely I browse Etsy. This is potentially dangerous because I sometimes find things I want to buy. But I will look up some term I'm interested in (hand-dyed sock yarn, or Garfield, or natural history) and I can find things to look at. Almost like an endless catalog and if I'm not to hasty on "add to cart," it's a cheap way to self-soothe. 

Part of it is the fun of looking at "vintage" things (I am "vintage," by their definition). Like I can look up most of the toy/character lines I remember from my youth and see stuff I actually had, and sometimes something I kind of want. 

It's also enjoyable to look at stylistic things. All kinds of weird things, stuff you can't find in most stores (or at least nothing I can find in stores near me). You can find many aesthetic styles.....like, I like things with plants or insects on them, but only somewhat-realistic ones. And then I discovered I could look up things like "forestcore" and see things that fit that.

(Another term is "goblincore" but I prefer "forestcore," some people have noted that "goblin" was sometimes, traditionally, like in old fairy stories, an antisemitic trope, and I don't want to give offense over my silly little interests. Anyway, forestcore works.)

I recently bought a couple t-shirts. I don't *really* need more but a nice t-shirt is a nice thing to have. One of  the most recent ones says "Love the Unlovable" and has creatures like worms and bats and beetles on it, and I also like the truth of that - that every creature does matter, it has its own role in the world.  And I bought another one in a dark denim color with a knitting folkloric style crow on it (the crow is holding the knitting with its wing feathers, which, I'm not sure how that would work, but I guess it could not stand and also use its feet....)

A number of the vintage 50s/60s cookbooks I have came from various sellers on there over the years; I've gone back to pulling one off the shelf to look at while I sit and eat lunch or dinner. 

But it is kind of nice and fun to explore aesthetics in a small way. I never did "phases" as a tween or teen - I guess Goth and emo existed back then (I know metalhead and jock and preppie did), but I never felt like I fit with any of those, and also something like dying my hair black or whatever, I felt like my parents and their friends would have asked me questions and I didn't feel like having to discuss it. But now I realize: I can buy unusual t-shirts and the biggest reaction I get is some student will say "that's *cool*, where did you get it" or I can order soy candles with different scents, or occasionally get some little toy like one I had and lost, or that I wanted and never had...

I've also been looking over the old Scholastic paperbacks various sellers have, not so much to buy, but to see if I see ones I remember. (Ironically, I mostly remember the picture books I had when I was small, like the Clifford books or Sylvester and the Magic Pebble, rather than the "chapter books" I read as an older kid. I know I used the library a lot for those. And it seems like there were a LOT of what look to me like "teen problem" books, like a girl whose parents are splitting up, or someone who has two boys who "like-like" her, and I know I would have found those less interesting, I preferred books that were set in a different time or place or had fantasy creatures or adventures (I DID see a copy of "My Side of the Mountain" there, though, and my paperback copy MAY have been a Scholastic book, I don't remember)

But maybe looking for various things that interest me or that seem to fit with my current style, even if I don't order anything, may be a bit of a solution to the end-of-the-day doldrums, when I really really want to DO something other than work, or other than just going home and showering and thinking about making dinner, when there's really "nothing" in my town to do and "nowhere" for me to go (Of places that interest me and that I might go to regularly. I'm not sure I'm up for plowing through the multiple thrift shops that have opened even if they might have interesting stuff, a lot of times here "condition" is a problem, especially for things like books, and with Etsy it seems to be easier to go "nah, that's not in good enough shape" instead of being in a store and going "well, I walked around looking at stuff for thirty minutes, this book is the only thing I might like, but the spine's broken, do I just buy it anyway so I'm not wasting my time?"

And it does make me feel less weird and alone to find a shirt that's relevant to one of my "unusual" interests (weird bugs, or old books, or knitting) and be reminded that there are other people out there that like this stuff too.