I wanted a pun-ish title, so I settled on: Covering body and soul. It makes the Chinese part of me happy (the puns).

You know, until I saw my roommate layer a turtleneck t-shirt under her deep v-neck sweaters, it never occurred to me that you could do that, and I was always left wondering what the heck you would do with layering turtleneck t's and those deep v-necks that are so popular these days because neither seemed very practical for cold weater. I think I'm a tad too oblivious when it comes to fashion and trends. Or survival winter dressing for freezing temperatures. Anyways. That has spurred a whole slew of new clothing combinations [and also necklace wearing, because apparently you can wear those necklaces on top of the turtleneck tees! Who knew? Obviously my roommate did because she's the one who gave me the necklace in this photo! If you can't tell, it's a giant rose and gorgeous. We both love clothes. I am going to have to come up with some nice gimmick to photograph us together sometime. You know me. There WILL be a gimmick.]



I have to admit, I rarely wear cool colors. They don't work very well with my skin tone, I find them hard to match, and after a year of living in China where they love bright and warm tones, that perspective really rubbed off on me although I think I've always loved layering warm colors and fall colors and neutrals. So when I do come up with an outfit that incorporates cool colors I really feel like I need to document it for posterity! Heh.

This post is not going anywhere deep. But one of my [renewed] goals for myself is to start writing more regularly, and this blog is a good place for public accountability so I felt like I needed to just throw up something before I got paralyzed by inaction. Writing is something that I feel like I need to do. Thanks to that lovely phase in life we call the Quarter Life Crisis, I spend a lot of time thinking about the type of contribution that I want to make to this world, and I can't help it, I keep coming back to this nagging sensation deep inside that says Jessica, you need to write. I don't care how much improvement your writing could use, writing is important to whatever contribution you could possibly make.

This is not a new sensation. Actually, let's be honest, I've felt it all my life. And saying that gives me pause, because it seems so grandiose, somehow, as though I am projecting a certain level of competence onto my writing abilities. But I also think that I process experiences differently, live more fully, come to greater understanding, and weave together strands and anecdotes and bits of understanding into a more coherent whole when I sit down to pull the words together and create sentences, paragraph, sometimes whole pages of writing. So maybe it is not the end result of writing but the process that is important.

I just, I can't help but think that if, when you were five, the 3 things you wanted to become were 1) doctor, 2) writer, 3) environmentalist that solves the world's pollution problems ... and you are obviously not going to become a doctor and you are content to tackle environmentalism on the microscale of your own life, maybe rippling out slightly to the lives of those around you ... writing still remains. Sooner or later, you need to listen to that.

So yes. I am publicly committing to doing more writing. Maybe on this blog. Hopefully there will be some interesting pictures to go along the the text, I just can't promise anything for sure. I could always take more mirror photographs of my daily outfits, of course, unless I get off my arse and go buy myself a tripod like I keep meaning to do ...