witty titles are not my forte…

We have a new Painfully Hip guest-poster! The ridiculously adorable Diana from Bouy: of assets and assholes. We’re really excited about her future with us. She’s planning on taking a month-long thrifting roadtrip across the US, blogging about it the entire way! When it gets under way, we’ll be featuring installments of her adventures. Score! Here’s her introductory post about finding her purpose and personal style.         

hi. my name is diana, and i get pretty obsessed with things. the lovely amber gave me the green flag on sharing some of those obsessions with everyone over here, and i’m pretty excited, because few things are better than writing about things i can’t stop thinking about.
ok.
so the reasons i get out of bed in the morning are as follows:

1.  i have to check the vintage auctions i’m watching on ebay
2. by getting out of bed there is more of a possibility i will encounter a thrift store
3. my sewing machine is not in my bedroom
4. i have exhausted all photo possibilities from ever angle of the above-mentioned bed
5.  my laptop needs to be plugged in

 i also harbor a deep love for color theory, pretty much all music, and writing about things.  mostly things that have to do with the topics listed above.

 i moved to brooklyn a year and a half ago with the grand idea that i would work in fashion.  i was (fairly) fresh out of school, and i pictured the transition from education to industry to be a fairly painless move – actually, i pictured it to be the same encouraging community i’d experienced in the classroom, only i’d be getting paid.
that was the wrong impression. 

my first year in brooklyn, i spent a large percentage of my non-work hours locked to my laptop, searching for the encouraging community i was having a difficult time finding in my new home.  i devoured any style and diy/indie/vintage/”unique” fashion site I could find. there were the standard street style sites – the sartorialist, wardrobe_remix, stylesightings and hel looks, and then there were the personal blogs…

at this point, i feel that if all else fails, i will still be fine because i have bits and bobbins. i credit tricia royal with doing most of the leg work necessary to pull me out of my biggest funk to date. (i still haven’t figured out how to express my gratitude without sounding creepy and stalker-esque.) her style, her consistently cheerful and encouraging disposition, her use of color, her awe-inspiring design skills, and her photographs –oh! the photographs! – how can you not fall in love with her?

there are others out there too, that i find myself returning to, day after day, and drawing energy and inspiration from (this is a very edited list…)

• elegant musings is like a one-girl factory of awesome.
• icing is one of those dangerous places you disappear into for hours without even realizing you’ve been gone.
• stylebytes, moderniteter and themoldydoily –is it possible for me to be all three of you when i grow up? please? please?

seeing people use style as the jumping off point for so many aspects of life – using it as an expression of self, a creative outlet, a way to bring color into the everyday, a way to have fun with your surroundings – has lead me to start thinking about things in entirely different terms – i don’t put clothes on in the morning to simply cover my body, so why should i work a job that isn’t enjoyable simply to pay rent?
it’s really the next logical step, right?

what we choose to surround ourselves with, what we wear, the way we act, what we do to survive, in an ideal setting, these should all just be an extension of ourselves, not something we escape from on the weekend when we get to slip out of “responsible functioning human” mode.

i’ve been thinking about this – obsessing over it, actually – for quite some time now, and i feel confident in my opinion that it’s possible to be a fully functioning human, and still be responsible to yourself.
here’s to personal style and discovering what drives you.
let the games begin.