I’ve been struggling with blogger’s block lately. Partially, I’m sure, it’s because I’ve been genuinely busy and have had a lot of Serious Writing to get out the door. I suspect there’s more to it than that, though. I’ve been trying to figure out how to reconcile my (evolving!) blog-mission with my (evolving!) life-mission right now, and I hope you’ll be willing to indulge me just a little … mission creep. It sounds frightening, I know, but I hope it’ll be a step forward in the long run.

I believe (really, a lot!) in the power of our style choices to fashion our selves and deeply influence our experiences. It’s part of why I started this blog: to push myself to think critically about the self I was presenting to the world, and about the ways that outward self did (and sometimes didn’t) jive with the inner reality. To take a little bit more seriously a part of my life that I often didn’t. Or at least, to take it seriously enough to get out of the rut I’d been in as I tried to navigate what I was supposed to be doing as a (slightly) older student in the second half of law school.

And it’s worked, by and large: I’ve pushed my own sartorial boundaries in ways I never would have expected, toppled some serious body image barriers (even while enormously pregnant), made friends in sometimes surprising places, and felt comfortable and confident in my own skin. Along the way, you’ve encouraged, challenged and inspired me, and I hope I’ve done some measure of that for some of you as well. Or at least kept you from feeling like you had to wear 1970s floral smocks for your entire pregnancy.

But while this space is a lot about style, it’s also about identity, both general and specific. Identity in a category: as a woman, in professional life, in academic life, in a region, in a family, as a spouse, as a parent, a thinker, an athlete, a daughter, a friend. My own identity, in my own real set of day-to-day lived experiences actually being all of those things. At once. Not all of which neatly reduce to and find metaphors in what I’m wearing (though it might be neat, just as a thought experiment, if they did).

All of this is really to say, I’m expanding the scope of what you’ll see around here over the coming weeks and months. While I promise not to entirely devolve into posting adorable pictures of my kid (which is fine! As a life choice! Really!), I’ll probably talk a bit more about her and our lives and what I really think about what it’s like to have a baby in law school (some of that specific identity stuff). And I’ll probably have a bit more to say about the broader picture, about professional and academic life, about gender, about working parenthood, too. And maybe even on a good day, some of the things that make up the “spare time” of my life, the extracurricular thoughts and activities that flit in and out of a currently relatively packed existence. Probably, also, there will be some things that are just pretty and enjoyable. I’m not sure precisely how this content will or won’t weave in with outfit posts and some of my ongoing series on personal style development, so I’ll beg your indulgence as I figure out what works best.

As I said, think of it as mission creep, not mission abandonment. This space is and always will be about self-fashioning and the aesthetics and politics of identity, about finding and claiming a spot in transitional times in life, about finding the creativity and joy and self-love for which a serious job should be no excuse. As a result, explicitly style-related content will remain the majority of what you see here. But after more than a year of blogging through a lot of life changes, I’m just testing out a slightly broader lens in examining these kinds of questions. I’m hoping it will give me a chance to push the content you see here a little further in terms of the writing, photography and design, and to provide an outlet for a little bit more of life as I’m living it.

I couldn’t be more thankful for all of you, long- and short-time readers, lurkers, commenters and tweeps, for the way you’ve enriched my days and made what seemed like a slightly zany experiment in stepping out of my comfort zone feel so worthwhile and awesome. I’m looking forward to this new phase, and as always, welcome your thoughts on the kinds of content you’re most interested in, whether via e-mail, comment or 4:00 a.m. tweet.

And who knows, this might even be fun. 

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