Challenge Vs. Skill diagram from Wikipedia via Merlin’s footnotes.
I was going to write a post about Merlin’s post on Just Enough To Start but I’ll just let him do the talking. As usual he hits it right on the head. His talk at MaxFunCon (linked to in his post) was one of the things that got me off my ass and trying to make a regular schedule for posting to this blog again. I don’t know if he would want to be called inspirational but he is, in just the right way.
The first real step I’ve taken in my year of reinvention is to try to figure out how to dress less like a lazy geek and/or slob. Since I’m a geek and know nothing about fashion besides that I like tshirts, I started like I normally do with new projects and researched the topic like crazy. I spent way too much time reading various websites on men’s fashion to see what the basics were and what I liked out of that stuff. I finally read a book I bought awhile back as well.
For my web research, I used my favorite new tool, Evernote, to keep track of what I found. Evernote’s Firefox add-on lets you clip parts out of websites and store them in a special notebook in Evernote. Then when I went to Old Navy (the first place I could think of that might have the clothes I was looking for despite never having had shopped there before, surely a triumph of advertising) and pulled up the notes in Evernote on my iphone. Yes, I’m a geek. They were having a good sale so I was able to go out on a limb and get a number of things I wouldn’t have otherwise bought for not too much money.
I’m still trying to get used to wearing long sleeves instead of my t-shirts and polos. But overall I’ve been happy with my choices. So far I think I look a little more polished without sacrificing my personal style and I’m fairly comfortable. I credit a pragmatic attitude and baby steps with this. If I had tried to jump whole-hog into everything I saw in my research, I wouldn’t have been as happy. So far so good.
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