Link List: Lunchbox Stories

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Although it's currently too early for me to start writing my end-of-month reading reflections post for February, I needed to mention the novel I just finished because it was just too good! Susanna Clarke's Piranesi is really special, an incredibly beautiful, immersive story that I was completely swept up in and stayed up late to finish reading in one day. (It's not a particularly long book, but I started reading after dinner.) These days, not many books are able to capture my attention so fully. 

Please note that this post contains affiliate links that could result in my earning a small commission - at no extra cost to you - if you click and make a purchase. Thank you for your support!

And one definitely doesn't need to have been a fan of Clarke's first novel, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell to enjoy Piranesi. I tried to pick up Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell years ago, but never quite managed to get into it. The experience of reading Piranesi may inspire me to try reading Clarke's first novel again. 

1. // I enjoyed this insightful Eater article about "The Limits of the Lunchbox Moment." You've probably heard the story at least once, about the first or second-generation immigrant child whose ethnic food is declared gross or smelly by other children in the school cafeteria. No doubt that's happened to and been hurtful to many. But it's also not a universal Asian American or Chinese-American (or Taiwanese-American) experience, and that may be obscured by how ubiquitous the lunchbox story is in American media (a space that might not have room for all the complex, nuanced Asian American stories out there). 

In my case, I've never had a lunchbox story. Throughout elementary school, I ate cafeteria hot lunch almost every day. On field trip days when school lunch wasn't available, I generally got Lunchables. I only rarely brought anything else to school for lunch, if I did it'd typically be a sandwich with a somewhat Taiwanese bakery spin like this. 

And because I grew up in the Silicon Valley Bay Area, where the large-ish public schools I attended always had majority-Asian American student bodies - we may have been as much as 75% of the population at every school I attended, to the point where a notorious-in-our-community Wall Street Journal article from 2005 claimed we caused a "New White Flight" by scaring off white families - it was unlikely anyone would have had a "lunchbox moment," where they were shamed for bringing ethnic food. Our Asian American student population skewed heavily East Asian and South Asian. On any given day, one saw a wide range of both western and Asian-style lunches brought from home. No one really had reason to comment on anyone else's food, we'd seen it all before. When I shared this article with a close friend who attended public school in a midwestern state with a much smaller Asian population, she also had no lunchbox story. She observed that different schools have their own culture, and not all children learn to behave cruelly in this specific way. 

One theme in this article is that, for many of the people interviewed, published articles, essays, or books written by other Asian Americans often aren't accurate to their personal experiences. There's some frustration that a more diverse range of Asian American stories isn't being told, and that's likely at least in part because certain stories are seen as more marketable or "sellable to an editor" than others. 

It's difficult to find other stories about the Chinese-American or Taiwanese-American experience that truly resonate with me. Throughout my childhood, and even in college, I was sheltered from being made to feel "less than" because of my racial or ethnic identity, I was always at schools where at least a significant critical mass of students looked like me. With regards to race and identity, my personal story is therefore dominated by experiences of workplace discrimination and implicit bias that are specific to the legal industry. To the extent I look back further in time, issues of economic class and my parents' marital status - divorce being rare amongst the Asian American communities I grew up attending school with - weigh far heavier than questions related to my race. 

Link List: Some Money-Related Things

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I hope that everyone is doing well as we head into the year-end holiday season! K and I are now 13 days into our stricter-than-usual pre-holiday quarantine, in hope of spending Christmas and New Years with K's parents. I'll also be taking the last two weeks of the year off from work - using up the remainder of my 2020 vacation time - which will be nice. I'm feeling a bit of writer's block on blog-related writing, so I think my posting here may slow down a bit for the the next two or three weeks. 

Not a huge link list post today, but there were a few interesting money-related links I saw recently, so I figured I might as well share them now, instead of waiting to try and find other links to add. Sometimes I hold onto links for so long while trying to compile a longer post that it becomes too weird to share them because they were from so many months ago!

1. // Corporette occasionally does reader-submitted "Money Snapshot" posts, and the most recent one - from a doctor in a very high-paying Public Service Loan Forgiveness ("PSLF") eligible job - ignited quite a bit of discussion, both at Corporette and at r/MoneyDiariesActive. Be forewarned, the Corporette discussion is particularly negative, with a lot of people unreasonably criticizing the doctor for using PSLF when it's not her fault the program is structured in a way such that she is eligible for it! Also, while I'm no PSLF expert, I'm pretty sure both discussions are peppered with commenters misunderstanding how PSLF works. 

The student loan forgiveness programs available to some federal student loan borrowers here in the US - generally after relatively lengthy periods of income-based repayment before the remaining balance can be forgiven - are sometimes seen as controversial. (In 2018, I wrote a post that discussed a somewhat viral story about an orthodontist relying on PAYE or REPAYE to handle what had apparently grown into a million dollar student loan balance.)  

2. // Anne Helen Peterson just published the first article in a planned series for Vox about "America's Hollow Middle Class." I thought this was an interesting read, and I'm looking forward to more! The author notes on Twitter that it's by design that this first article is a bit broad and general. Future articles in the series will be more focused on some of the many relevant underlying factors to this discussion. 

3. // Amanda Mull wrote in The Atlantic about the Afterpay, Klarna, and Affirm-type interest-free, "buy now and pay in installments" options that are popping up at various online retailers. Even one of the big fountain pen shops has partnered with Affirm! I confess, I've never really been able to understand why there's a market for these payment arrangements. This article does somewhat begin to answer this question - it may be, in part, for people who don't use credit cards - though I still don't quite understand why customers are interested.  

4. // Abra at Capitol Hill Style recently wrote in considerable detail about her experiences with running a monetized blog. Whenever a more popular blogger writes about the business side of blogging, I'm always interested in getting that behind-the-scenes look. She's probably somewhat unique among more prominent, longstanding fashion bloggers in that she chooses not to do sponsored posts. 

Abra's commentary about her past experience with ShopStyle's Pay Per Click ("PPC") program was particularly interesting to me, as someone who also may ultimately prefer that affiliate link model for my blog. She notes that her PPC earnings - before she transitioned to the sales commission-based model - had ranged from $0.04/click to $0.09/click. My own PPC earnings never rose above ~$0.075/click. The only other data point about peak PPC earnings I'm aware of is that Ariana of the now-shut down Paris to Go (I miss the blog dearly! I still follow her on Instagram) has sometimes discussed her past blog earnings in Instagram stories. I vaguely recall that it sounded like she sometimes got significantly above my typical $0.06 to $0.07/click commission rate because she was very focused in how she approached affiliate links. 

Regardless, in-depth discussion about ShopStyle's previous PPC model is largely irrelevant now, as I don't think the company is particularly interested in supporting it anymore. But I'm still interested in looking back on it sometimes. 

I'll probably write at least one or two more new posts before the end of 2020. But in case I don't manage it, best wishes to you and your loved ones for this holiday season and for the new year! 

With the start of Pfizer COVID vaccine distribution to front-line healthcare workers here in the US and FDA approval of the Moderna vaccine likely to come soon, I'm feeling more optimistic about 2021. As a younger-ish adult with no risk factors and who works a non-essential, mostly remote for now job, it likely won't be my turn to get a vaccine for at least a few more months. Once it's available to people like me, however, I'll be rushing to get it. 

Link List: More About Workplace Discrimination

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Of late, I've been preoccupied with some of the smaller topics that have come up in connection with recent conversations about race and discrimination in the US. Because of certain of my own less happy professional experiences, and because I've experienced firsthand how difficult it is to truly and meaningfully challenge discrimination in the legal profession, I have a deep interest in discussions about workplace discrimination across various industries, not just in the law. 

1. // This first article, from Vice, is not technically about workplace discrimination, though my personal encounters with its subject matter have tended - distressingly, and somewhat creepily - to occur in the biglaw workplace and the law school recruiting process to get into said workplace. The article is about a joke t-shirt displaying the message "I Don't Need to Know About Your Asian Wife" and about the experiences with racism and sexism that caused the frustration and anger leading to the creation of said t-shirt.

One recurring theme to my personal reflections about all these discussions is that I'm fully cognizant of the relative privileges I've experienced as an Asian-American of East Asian descent - solidly within "model minority" stereotypes - and this is true here too. Within the article, the most distressing and sexually objectifying experiences with "Asian wife guys" are generally not from interviewees or Twitter users of East Asian descent. 

This is consistent with my personal experience. My biglaw and on-campus recruiting encounters with a number of "Asian wife guys" have all been comparatively... benign. They're definitely not making a pass at me, they genuinely just seem to think - perplexingly - that... it's a good way to make friendly small talk with the Asian-American junior associate or law student. And if this "Asian wife guy" is someone at your firm and in your practice group, this particular trait is probably going to be part of a combination of things that clearly show you over time that this person - almost always a partner, ugh - is likely... not going to be a particularly good professional mentor or sponsor for your career development.

2. // This next article from The Cut is actually about workplace discrimination in biglaw. Specifically, it's about how "Racism at my Job Literally Gave Me PTSD" (archive.is link, if needed), from the perspective of a Black woman and former associate at a prominent biglaw firm in NYC. (She's previously written at least one other article about her time in biglaw.) 

Here's another instance in which I recognize my comparative privilege as an Asian-American of East Asian descent, one with many markers of the "model minority" stereotype. While I had no real chance to succeed from my very first days in biglaw, well before I had a chance to prove myself a good or bad worker (so it had nothing to do with my merits as an associate) - and while I also felt some of the emotions the author describes in The Cut article in my first months at my subsequent jobs as a result - what I experienced is still nothing in comparison to what my Black and Latinx colleagues face. In the end, no one ever actually said anything to me that could form the basis of a Title VII discrimination claim, and people from my demographic are extremely well-represented in the biglaw junior ranks.  

I'm reminded of a moment from my summer associate days: A well-meaning - but somewhat graceless - white classmate questioned how the firm described our summer class as extremely diverse; if almost every attorney of color in the class was Asian-American, that isn't exactly meaningfully diverse, is it? For context, the summer class consisted of several dozen people (I'm being intentionally imprecise to protect my anonymity). Almost half of us were attorneys of color. (And I can further confirm that most Asian-American members of the class happened to be of East Asian descent, to add to the sense of lacking genuine diversity.) My classmate probably shouldn't have said this thing in front of me, it resembles the "there's too many Asians here" type of racism that's reared its head a number of times in my life, in descriptions of communities I'm a part of - commentary often affirmed by fellow Asian-Americans, it's a very complicated thing - but this classmate also wasn't wrong. 

The author described her entering law firm class in her office as counting only four Black women among its roughly 60 members. My entire firm's newly entering class my year - including robustly-sized classes in several other major-market offices besides NYC, for a total of well over 100 new associates firm-wide - barely had more than that. 

3. // Going back to discussions of workplace discrimination in other industries, here's a Grub Street profile of Tammie Teclamarian (archive.is link, if needed), a.k.a. @tammieetc on Twitter, who can fairly be described as an important food media whistleblower. Teclamarian played a significant role in revealing the misdeeds and problematic behavior that led to the departure of Adam Rapoport, former Editor in Chief at Bon Appetit, and also of Matt Duckor, former head of video at Conde Nast, as discussed in one of my July blog entries.

Teclamarian has also been a major player in the discussions that led to the resignation of Peter Meehan from the Los Angeles Times food section. In the weeks since, it became clear and was well-corroborated that Meehan was often an emotionally volatile and terrible person to work under, just like Teclamarian reported before his resignation. 

Sadly, it's now clear that Conde Nast won't fix the pay disparities associated with the Bon Appetit YouTube channel, which became public knowledge in June and which has since caused the departure of a large percentage of the individuals previously appearing in their videos. As I stated, I personally committed to never again viewing another Bon Appetit YouTube video until this problem was fixed. So because Conde Nast doesn't ever plan to fix it, the Bon Appetit YouTube channel is now dead to me forevermore. Good riddance! 

Link List: On Federal Mail and Wire Fraud

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Current events from this past week give me some opportunity to discuss a topic about which I have some general professional knowledge, namely the law governing US federal mail and wire fraud. So let's get right to it! There actually manage to be two significant news stories from last week that illustrate certain distinct things to do with federal mail and wire fraud. 

And because today's post discusses legal topics, a reminder: While I am an attorney at my day job, I am not your attorney. Nothing in this blog should ever be construed as legal advice or as forming an attorney-client relationship. 

1. // First up, Steve Bannon and a number of alleged co-conspirators were arrested on a federal indictment for - among other charges - mail and wire fraud in connection with what started as a GoFundMe scam, purportedly to help the government "build the wall" along the US's southern border. In part to extract the ~$20 million originally raised on GoFundMe for this, to put it lightly, truly bonkers purpose (there appear to be various legal and regulatory complications associated with trying to gift money to the federal government to "build the wall"), defendants allegedly represented that they would not be paid out of the donated funds. Those representations have allegedly been shown to be false. (See paragraphs 19 to 25 of the indictment.)  

This story corroborates an unrelated point I recently made when discussing some viral tweets - initiated by at least a few known alt-right agitators - that accused the Minnesota Freedom Fund or "MNFF" (a small local bail fund and beneficiary of an unprecedented-for-them ~$30 million in donations in the days immediately following the killing of George Floyd) of misusing funds due to failing to immediately spend that money in barely two to three weeks. 

At that time, there was no real basis for any reasonable actor to believe funds were being misused. It had been barely two or three weeks since the donations came in. MNFF had been operational for at least a few years before 2020, and had always made clear that part of their work was immigration bail, not just bail for defendants arrested on criminal charges. They appear to have been well-known in their own community. They promptly asked for donations to start going elsewhere within the first few days, which I tried to honor when I wrote about my donations. They had already spent six figures on bail by the time the viral tweets accusing them of wrongdoing started going around. 

Regardless, the US is a country where GoFundMe or other crowdfunding donation scams occurring conspicuously in the public eye become a likely target for prosecution. The indictment and arrest of Steven Bannon and his alleged coconspirators is certainly evidence of that. Should these defendants be convicted, I'd be willing to bet real money that their sentences will be longer than a year - and probably by a significant margin - unlike the sentences associated with this next story... 

2. // Secondly, by now you may also have heard that Lori Laughlin and her husband were sentenced last Friday for their role in the "Operation Varsity Blues" case, as parents who paid someone to facilitate getting their children into college with falsified credentials. Lori Laughlin received two months incarceration, and her husband five months. These are not long sentences by any conceivable standard. They are also fairly "typical" sentences for the parent defendants in this case, for those who have already been sentenced. Nor did the Government typically request significantly longer sentences than each of the parents actually got. 

There are so many ways in which the American criminal justice system is both immensely cruel and profoundly unjust. While my professional experience with federal criminal defense is limited, I can at least point to certain background facts relevant to understanding the sentences for the Varsity Blues parent defendants. I have not generally been surprised by the duration of these sentences, including Felicity Huffman's 14-day sentence. There are at least two major reasons for this.

Link List: Stuck at Home

I haven't done one of these "link list" posts in nearly six months!

This photograph, like others I've shared recently, was taken in more normal times. It's the red snapper with sea mustard pot at ON, which specializes in Korean-style hot pot dishes. I desperately yearn for the day we're finally able to safely eat in at restaurants again.

1. // Refinery29 recently posted a biglaw attorney money diary from someone who appears to be a seventh-year associate and who, based on her stated age, likely went straight from college to law school. Biglaw attorney money diaries probably aren't that interesting to anyone but me, but I can't get enough of them. 

Out of all the biglaw-ish money diaries over the years, this recent one and this 2018 one are the only ones I've thought especially representative of typical law school student loan repayment experiences. Many of the other biglaw diaries are from younger diarists who either claimed to have unusually generous law school scholarships (sizable scholarships like my 1/3 cost of attendance one are not uncommon, but true full-rides are rare) or who apparently finished paying off their loans within two or three years after law school. (Paying off a typical post-law school student loan balance - $160,000 on the low end - in that quick a timeframe is difficult, even for the especially frugal biglaw associate. Four to five years is more common amongst my peers.) This diarist reports that, at 32, she has fully paid off her law school loans, though their household is still paying off her spouse's student loans. 

What isn't as typical here is that the diarist normally lives in NYC (in a one-bedroom for $4,250/month, which is a fair bit more than K and I pay, but isn't too unusual for a one-bedroom in a newer "luxury" building), but has rented a house in the Connecticut suburbs to socially distance in. Based on my experience, that's an outlier choice for a NYC biglaw associate, whether they have a child or not. The only associates I know who left NYC due to COVID-19 - like this diarist, they generally departed well before March 12, more than a week before New York officially shut down - all moved in with their parents. Biglaw attorneys are well-compensated, but not enough to comfortably pay rent for two separate homes simultaneously over several months! 

2. // Apartment Therapy's YouTube channel has a series of videos touring various apartments and other small homes, many of them in NYC. I particularly loved this tour of Ashley Ford's (iSmashFizzle on Twitter) apartment in Brooklyn. She's so cool! And they're such a sweet, absolutely adorable couple.

A lot of the older videos in the series don't quite show the entire living space, particularly for the slightly larger homes. Many kitchens and bathrooms are omitted, or only a small slice of them are shown. But it's still interesting to look at the wide range of decor styles.

3. // I enjoyed the recent NPR Planet Money podcast episode, "J.Screwed" (hah!), about the J.Crew bankruptcy. They focus on the Jenna Lyons period at J.Crew, noting that the brand's profile and "cool factor" rose significantly after Michelle Obama wore J.Crew on The Tonight Show in 2008. That pretty much lines up exactly with when I first became aware of the brand. I found that late 2000s and early 2010s J.Crew aesthetic completely irresistible and super aspirational when I was in college.

I confess, although much of my attorney work experience is focused on complex commercial transactions, I don't actually understand this story very well. I gather that the relevant business story begins with a leveraged buyout of J.Crew by a private equity firm back in 2011, something to that effect, but that's about it. (Attorneys are trained not to claim claim a full understanding of anything until they've analyzed the relevant contracts and other documents, which are typically voluminous and dense reading when it comes to complex commercial matters.)

4. // I also enjoyed Anne Helen Petersen's recent piece about the potential impact of COVID-19 economic disruptions on American consumer culture and about the role of consumer spending in the American economy at large.

Part of why I'm so attached to Marie Kondo's first book is that I credit it with being the primary factor that allowed me to reevaluate my personal relationship with consumerism. I had many other influences in that "journey," but in the end, the biggest single thing that made the change stick was using KonMari method to see that, no, I never again want to accumulate so much stuff I didn't even actually want, or even particularly like, in the first place. This paragraph from Petersen's recent article is a pretty accurate description of how I used to acquire things unthinkingly:

We’re trained to buy often, buy cheap, and buy a lot. And I’m not just talking about food, which everyone has to acquire in some capacity, or clothes. I mean all the other small purchases of daily life: a new face lotion, a houseplant holder, a wine glass name trinket, an office supply organizer, a vegetable spiralizer, a cute set of hand towels, a pair of nicer sunglasses, a pair of sports sunglasses, a pair of throwaway sunglasses. The stuff, in other words, that you don’t even know that you want until it somehow finds its way to your cart at Target or T.J. Maxx.

Up through 2015, I was definitely no stranger to the random T.J.Maxx knickknacks that somehow got added to the shopping basket, in addition to the towels or cutting board I was actually looking for.

And that's it for today's link list post. Have you been reading any particularly good online articles or watching any interesting YouTube videos recently? 

Link List: The December Crunch

Photo from Yayoi Kusama's Longing for Eternity, on display at The Broad in Los Angeles.

In my experience - and that of many of my biglaw and biglaw-ish friends and colleagues - December tends to be a hectic time at work, right up to the start of the new year. We're mostly all able to travel to visit family for the holidays, at least: Our industry is more flexible than many in that regard, as long as one stays online and is ready to work as needed. (I'll actually be staying in NYC this year, and my family will come visit me, which will be lovely. Among other things, we're going to see Moulin Rouge on Broadway!)

In certain non-litigation practice areas, there's an impetus for some types of work to be done immediately before the new year. The attorneys in those specialties accept that a relaxed December holiday season is simply not in the cards for them, and that "real" vacations must be taken at other times of year. 

In litigation, there's no real reason why things need to shake out that way, but something about how larger firms assign work - or maybe about how court schedules move - generally results in December being on the busier side, at least for more junior associates. (For litigators, summer is generally the reliably quiet period. Between the partners at your own firm, your client, the judge, and opposing counsel and their client, there's always someone on vacation. The result is that everything just seems to move slower than normal.) 

That's a long way of saying that this blog will be quiet through the New Year - and for some time after - due to some new developments in my cases. I'll still post - it's a safe bet I'll get my December 2019 shopping reflections post done on schedule, for instance - but on a noticeably-reduced schedule. Anything more long-winded, or that requires more thought or reflection - including my annual blog income report - will probably only be done months after I originally planned. (Spoiler alert: there's no big changes there, and I'll likely have earned a bit less in 2019 than I did in 2018.) 

1. // This animated short film, Hair Love, by Matthew Cherry, is an absolute delight. Definitely watch it, if you haven't yet. It's an incredibly sweet story.

2. // So did anyone else notice the rather extreme online reactions to this admittedly odd Peloton advertisement? While the kerfluffle was at its peak, I hadn't actually watched the ad in full - with sound on - yet, so I wasn't in a position to have any views of my own. Though I had seen a few seconds of the ad on silent, and I did think it gave off a weird vibe. (Something about the actress's eyebrows makes her look rather stressed out or anxious.)

After all was said and done, I decided I might as well watch the ad with sound on for myself and... it didn't bother me. With the sound on, the actress didn't seem so stressed or uncomfortable after all. I would never have given this ad a second thought if I came across it organically, or were it not for all the news stories about the online reactions, and the fact that Peloton's stock price promptly saw a significant drop, seemingly just because of the ad.

Please note that this portion of the post contains affiliate links that could result in a commission, typically a few cents, for me if you click. Thank you for your support!

3. // Shopping-wise, it's looking like my search for a satin-looking bright teal slip skirt isn't going to pan out. That Madewell midi slip skirt in "smoky spruce" I ordered during their Black Friday sale is only okay. It has an elastic waist, so I can adjust where the waistband sits until the skirt looks midi-length on me, but the shape doesn't suit me much.

I'm beginning to suspect that this silk or satin-looking slip skirt genre is a difficult one to pull off, that it's one of those things where - if one doesn't style the outfit well - the material can look a bit cheap. Styling items that are a bit outside of my fashion comfort zone is generally not my strong suit, let's just say. (Also, J.Crew continues to refuse to include their similar slip skirt in any of their promotions, and that just annoys me.)

Thank you, as always, to everyone who reads along here at Invincible Summer! Best wishes for the holiday season to you all, in case I'm not able to check in again until just before the new year. 

Link List: On a Business Trip (or Not)

I recently got to hang out with my friend's adorable husky while I was on vacation. Those scratch mark-looking things on the floorboards aren't doggie claw marks, they're an intentional design choice made by a previous owner of the home! I was not the first person to ask about that...

As you read this, I might be on an international business trip, or I might not. I won't know if I'm actually taking this trip until the eleventh hour, less than 24 hours in advance of the flight (for which a refundable itinerary was booked).

It's a bit difficult to explain how this scenario came about. The work I would be doing is legitimately urgent and important, but it might also not ultimately be necessary, depending on how certain things turn out. One can understand why I've generally been a bit stressed, and also a bit too preoccupied to write much of great substance here! 

I've had so many ideas recently for more long-form posts, including about the legal industry - with a particular focus on the quirks of biglaw - and about personal finance. But, alas, I also have no time to write for fun. And sometimes, when I manage to put together a substantial draft for one of my bigger ideas, I lose steam when I get to the last few paragraphs. Maybe I'll be able to write more when things finally calm down again at the office, but there's no real chance of that until December at the earliest. 

1. // This may only be of interest if you're curious about fashion/lifestyle blogging as an industry - all signs point to it being a somewhat fading segment of social media-based business, when compared to ones based more on Instagram or other social media platforms - but I really enjoyed Carly the Prepster's recent interview on the Bad on Paper podcast. This also wasn't the first time that Carly has been refreshingly transparent about the business side of her work, she's done a few detailed posts about such topics, including a very recent and candid Q&A. Oh, and back in the earliest days of r/blogsnark, she did an informative Q&A there too, which included some details about her yearly revenue at the time. (I also linked that r/blogsnark Q&A back in late 2016.) 

I related to a lot of what she said in her podcast interview, maybe to the degree where it's a bit weird that I feel that way, since our backgrounds and professions are so, so different. Anyway, I highly recommend the podcast episode if you're interested in fashion/lifestyle blogging as an industry.  

2. // Speaking of other topics I have so many thoughts about that I could write an entire other blog post - or two - about them, if I only had the time: I recently got off the library waiting list for Jia Tolentino's book of essays, Trick Mirror (affiliate link), which I loved. She's a brilliant writer, and I adore just about everything she publishes. I hadn't realized that she and I are basically the exact same age, and so we had some of the same internet-based experiences growing up. (Did anyone else also make their own websites on Angelfire or Geocities back in the day?) Though of course, she's a lot more eloquent in describing those experiences than I am, and she was also consistently more savvy and hip about everything internet and pop culture-related than I was. 

One of the essays in her book was excerpted into that "Athleisure, Barre and Kale" article in The Guardian, which went a bit viral. Among other places, people discussed the essay at great length over at Corporette and r/blogsnark. Having read both versions of that essay, I think the book version is much better, and is more clear in addressing the deeper themes she's getting at. 

3. // I enjoyed this article over at The Fashion Law about consumer fatigue with regards to buying large quantities of clothing and other changes in the clothing retail landscape. Are these trends - particularly the apparently increasing popularity of clothing rental services - ones you've noticed amongst your friends and peers?

I do know that a lot of clothing companies, including Ann Taylor - of all the unlikely places - have dabbled in trying to start a rental service. I've also had friends who've briefly tried things like Rent the Runway Unlimited when they had quite a few different weddings to attend in quick succession, but I don't know anyone who would use a clothing rental service in the long term. 

Did any of you read Jia Tolentino's The Guardian essay when it was first posted? What did you think? I noticed that reader responses were a bit more divided than I expected, though I do understand why. I also didn't find that particular piece as brilliant and sharp as I usually find her other writing, in part because I couldn't relate to being a frequent consumer of barre classes (I took a few classes once, and loathed it) or athleisure (doesn't fit my lifestyle, or my tastes in clothing). Though I do eat an excessive and embarrassing quantity of Sweetgreen, so I can vouch for how her description of the spirit in which a NYC office-dweller might opt to go to Sweetgreen is... disturbingly accurate. And if you listened to Carly's podcast interview, please let me know what you thought! 

Link List: On Vacation

personal photo taken from the Santa Monica pier

Thank you all for the well wishes and congratulations in response to my previous post! K and I are incredibly excited to be taking this next step together. (Actual wedding planning work is going to need to wait at least a few months, though, due to what we each have going on at the office.) 

But for now, I'm currently on vacation, and hanging out with some of my good friends here in sunny California. And while I'm on vacation, I'm making some time for blogging too, because writing here is definitely one of the things I do for fun.

via Architectural Digest

1. // Now this is something I only came across because another reader over at Kathy's shared it in the comments of Kathy's recent post about buying backups or copies of beloved items. I had not heard of the artist Michelle Oka Doner before, but I find her signature dress, pictured above, to be incredibly chic. (Her home and studio are also much the same.) I certainly love the idea of having one favorite and versatile dress made in multiple fabrics, to be worn in all kinds of settings and contexts.

2. // There was a recent purported biglaw attorney's Refinery29 money diary that attracted a bit of attention on r/blogsnark - more than it did even on the actual Money Diaries-focused subreddit - because the author was a bit of a character. In terms of whether this diary is realistic (or whether some major key pieces are missing), I'd personally peg this one as a bit less feasible and/or more likely to be omitting some serious family wealth than that CNBC alleged double-lawyer family finances graphic that was making the rounds a while back, and that I fussed about.

3. // When I was a teen and very young adult, it felt like Forever 21 was unstoppable. During my high middle school and high school years in the suburbs - and even during my Boston-area undergraduate years - Forever 21 felt a lot more accessible and ubiquitous than international fast fashion giants such as H&M or Zara.

So it was a bit surprising when I learned that, actually, Forever 21 has not been performing well for years now. They recently filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Though when I sit down and really think about it, it makes sense that Forever 21 has been overtaken by more social media-savvy brands. I'm no longer of an age to be in the target audience of either Forever 21 or any of its successful direct competitors, but even I had a distinct sense that there are many brands out there that are better about marketing over social media.

4. // A few blog links to share: I was excited to hear that Franish is making a return to blogging! Her approach to blogging was very influential to me when I started writing here. Among other things, my monthly shopping reflections series was originally inspired by her monthly "Budgeting Bloggers" link roundup back in the day. I always enjoy reading about Adina's creative endeavors. And I always love seeing Jane's photography, and these pictures from the annual art show at Rookwood Cemetary are particularly intriguing. 

Link List (and I Finally Picked a Reusable Coffee Cup)

At long last, I finally picked out my reusable coffee cup for all those lattes and flat whites. I ended up picking the 12 oz. Joco cup (affiliate link), and I think it's great! It's cute,  easy to wash, and even though it doesn't have a stopper, the lid design seems to keep coffee from leaking out while I'm transit.

I can't believe it's already October! Where has all the time gone? I have a week-long vacation coming up soon, to see some old friends in California, which I'm really looking forward to. Outside of that, K and I are both expecting lots of late nights at the office between now and at least a week or two past Thanksgiving. I'm hoping my upcoming vacation is enough to reenergize me for the busy months at the office to come. 

1. // I highly recommend this essay by Prachi Gupta about her late brother. It's a tragic story, and a complicated one, and she writes it beautifully. Many larger issues are implicated here, among them the same corners of the internet that gave rise to "incels" and their interest in extreme plastic surgery. 

2. // Via Kathy at Feather Factor, this Fashionista article describing TheRealReal's authentication processes does not inspire much confidence. I don't have too much skin in the game about this question because it's likely that I'll only ever buy "low risk" items on TheRealReal, both in terms of brands that aren't especially sought after and mostly limiting myself to clothing or small accessories that sell for less than $100/piece. 

This is as good a time as any to note that I recently had a run-in with TheRealReal's customer service because of their poorly disclosed policy that items discounted 40% or more off the original TheRealReal price would be final sale, and not eligible for return or refund. (At the time, this rule was buried in their FAQ section, but not clearly disclosed on the product page, when I was checking out, or even on my order confirmation email or the receipt in the package.) I wouldn't have ordered the item if I knew it was final sale. They ultimately accepted the return as a "one-time courtesy."

To the extent that a customer raises questions about the authenticity of an item, anecdotal evidence I've seen in a few places online suggests that TheRealReal would take the return without too much fuss. It may, however, also be the case that they commonly re-list the questionable item for other customers.

Please note that this post contains affiliate links that could result in a commission, typically a few cents, for me if you click. Thank you for your support!

3. // As I mentioned in my most recent shopping post, certain types of stressful and busy days at the office really set off my desire to stress shop. This hasn't resulted in any actual purchases to date, but I end up browsing a lot of online shops on those evenings. In those moments, I do have a feeling that my shopping judgment would not be as good or as careful as it typically is, if I allowed myself to make a purchase. Things are more likely to appeal to me or start looking like a good idea, even though part of me knows they're actually impractical, or not remotely close to being an arguable "need."

One recent trend I've been really taken by is croc-embossed leather in slightly unusual colors, think burgundy, blue, or green. Items that I've found particularly pretty are this Coach Charlie bag in croc-embossed blue, this Kate Spade Andi circle bag in croc-embossed deep bottle green, and this pair of Kate Spade loafers in croc-embossed red leather. (Oh, and I also like the Kate Spade faux snakeskin-looking Romy in burgundy.) Are these a new trend this year? I don't think croc-embossed bags or shoes, particularly in these types of colors, were very common in recent years past. I don't think I'm likely to end up indulging this craving. If I do, it's more likely to be with a pair of shoes than a handbag. Those items, and a few others, are linked in the widget below. 

A very truncated link list post today! I hope all is well with everyone as we head into the last quarter of 2019. If you ended up reading Prachi Gupta's essay, or had already read it on your own, please let me know what you think. It's such a complicated and heartbreaking story, and I think she perfectly captures the experience of loving a family member, even if you fundamentally disagree with them, don't particularly like them, and have, in fact, been almost completely estranged from them for years. 

Link List: Sweater Blazer Edition

via

I was quite excited to see photos of the Duchess of Sussex wearing a very familiar J.Crew collarless sweater blazer (affiliate link) recently. I'm not sure I attain quite the same level of lovely, effortless casual chic when I wear mine, but I can certainly vouch for how this sweater blazer makes a nice and versatile topper. The one downside to the item is that, given my terrible luck with wool-containing items from J.Crew in the past, I don't think I dare machine or hand-wash it, so I'm stuck with dry-cleaning when it eventually needs laundering someday.

Things at the office have continued to get more hectic. Not long ago, I had an emergency assignment to research the standard for mandamus, which, let me tell you, is a major sign something's gone terribly off the rails somewhere, and likely for reasons entirely beyond any one party's control. I do find these odd and urgent legal research questions sort of fun and exciting, though.

1. // I wanted to put in yet another recommendation for Bryan Stevenson's Just Mercy (affiliate link), and also for True Justice, the recent HBO documentary about Stevenson's life and career thus far. I've written here to recommend his book quite a few times now, and I simply cannot understate how much I admire him and what he has accomplished, as well as the outlook and perspective he brings to questions of racial justice and criminal justice. Fun fact, though I probably overuse the term "extraordinary" in my writing, to describe various things, it seems clear that I use the term most often when I'm recommending Just Mercy and describing the person behind it.

The inspiration for recommending his book again was the recent release of the trailer for a movie adaptation, from which it looks like the film will be depicting the earliest part of Stevenson's career. I'm excited that there will be a movie. Just Mercy is such an important book, and any opportunity for it to be shared with more people is therefore a wonderful thing. But I may admire the real Bryan Stevenson so much that no movie could ever possibly be fully accurate in embodying everything I admire about him. 

2. // A while back, I wrote a little bit about the process for making a claim in the Equifax settlement, the result of a widespread data breach a while back. I was also pretty cagey about exactly what type of claim I intended to file, and about the other implications of various provisions in the court documents, because I didn't want to inadvertently sound like I was giving legal advice. (As always, nothing in this blog should be construed as legal advice. This post does not create an attorney-client relationship, etc. etc.) 

In any case, tons of news sources out there were not so shy about recommending a type of claim to make. Events played out from there, and the FTC soon needed to amend its information page to, essentially, explain that class action settlements are not as straightforward as the general public may have originally been led to believe. Based on my review of the court-approved documents pertaining to the settlement, I have not personally been surprised by any of these developments. 

People were not at all pleased, to say the least. Nor should they be, as class action settlements are rarely that satisfying for individual class members. (A cynical view of the class action device may be that settlements are generally still quite satisfying for plaintiffs' class counsel, regardless of how the actual class members feel.) Note, however, that it seems to me as if a lot of the angry reactions mischaracterize many key facts, particularly about who technically is to blame. Plaintiffs' counsel - the people who, in theory, represent all us affected class members - did need to consent to how the settlement was structured, or else there wouldn't have been a settlement at all.

3. // So, uh, nothing literally like anything in this viral story from The Cut has ever actually happened to me. But upon a quick look at the article to help me decide whether to save the link to read later (given my situation at the office, I don't really have time to fully read and digest long-form articles at the moment), I found myself relating... a lot, actually... to some of the themes and feelings described therein. And that's a strange feeling. Especially because a lot of public reactions are fairly dismissive of the story, and not really receptive to Natalie's perspective.

That's complicated for me because, even if my own experiences are ultimately very different, I too had a time in my late teens and early 20s when I just... made poor, sometimes inexplicable (to my adult perspective) decisions about friendships because I was terribly insecure and didn't know myself, or how to draw boundaries. And I don't think it's that rare to have had this experience. I take responsibility for having made those poor choices, and I don't expect anyone to feel sorry for me. (And I'm not accusing the people I felt overawed by of doing anything wrong either. We were all very young, and sometimes immature. Sometimes they were unkind, and sometimes so was I. But ultimately we mostly meant well, including to each other. All of us have grown up a lot since, we're all very different people now.) But I also think it's something that's worthy of empathy. A lot of people have a toxic-to-them friendship or romantic relationship at some point in their lives. Or at least I think so? 

Anyway, college and the year immediately after it was a highly strange time for me. I'm still fascinated by how strange and disorienting that period of my life felt, and I continue to be befuddled by how I thought about social situations back then, how I reacted, and how I handled things. 

4. // A few blog entries elsewhere that I've been enjoying: I'm still thinking through some of the ideas raised in Adina's recent entry about personal branding. I have different ideas about "personal branding" in my profession on the one hand - the legal world is extremely small and one's reputation will precede you* - and for social media purposes on the other hand. Decluttering is clearly one of my favorite things to think about, and Luxe's post about the topic was a great read. It's always interesting to hear about different people's perspectives on the process and what it means to them. JENKR recently discussed a topic that's always near and dear to my heart, about how one's wardrobe might be different, if one's profession were different. 

Did you end up making a claim in the Equifax class action settlement? Have all the news stories about it also been giving you whiplash? I'm not necessarily shocked by the contents of any of the news coverage about the settlement, but I had thought it would take a lot longer for these problems to become fully apparent. Is anyone else following that story from The Cut, and the public reactions to it?

*Seriously, it could take as little as one bad day or bad event to ensure that tons of industry people will be gossiping about you for years to come (albeit not constantly, just whenever your name comes up, but that includes things like when you're a candidate for a new job opportunity).

Link List: The Farewell

This past weekend, K and I watched The Farewell, the new film from director Lulu Wang, starring Awkwafina. I hadn't realized that it was only released in four theaters nationwide last weekend, so I guess we were very lucky to be able to see it! The movie is really good, all the actors and actresses are excellent, especially Awkwafina. Although the subject matter is quite sad, with clear parallels to things that have happened in my own family, there are also surprising moments of levity. 

1. // I couldn't imagine creating a piece of art that's so personal, it must be incredibly nerve-wracking to see how audiences will react. This article in The Atlantic about Lulu Wang and the movie is great. One particular quote from the director was especially poignant, I thought, and really captured something I think about whenever I recommend something that speaks to facets of the Asian-American experience I find familiar and that resonate deeply with me: 

“I was just really hoping people didn’t hate it, because it is so personal, and it is my family. If they hated it, then they hate us, in a way, you know?”

That's even a sentiment I've expressed, though it was only buried deep in the footnotes of a post focused on something else. 

Whenever I recommend Kathy's novel Family Trust (affiliate link), I always do so with some trepidation because it's about people so much like me, my parents, and the community I grew up in. It's not exactly the same (there are some substantial differences, including in socioeconomic class), but before I read her novel, I would never have dreamed of seeing something so much like my lived experience depicted in a creative work, one that was receiving a fair amount of positive buzz and attention. To the extent that anyone out there found the characters in the novel absolutely loathsome or completely irredeemable, I would take it a bit personally. Such a strong negative reaction would suggest to me that the reader might not be inclined to show empathy to people a lot like like my parents and I, and that would make me sad. 

2. // Because I so recently wrote about my past notebook-hoarding habits (which did not go hand-in-hand with actually using said notebooks), I was a bit tickled when I saw that Vox's The Goods recently published an article about that exact phenomenon, of how difficult it often is for people to use up their notebooks and journals:

“A new, unused, good-looking notebook represents pure potential. The words we inscribe into this beautiful notebook will be words of pure genius, we tell ourselves,” Korkki says. “A used notebook is sullied — it shows how we attempted to achieve something impressive and fell short. [] I hate to continue writing in a journal I have previously abandoned months or even years before because that journal represents the ‘old’ me. A new journal represents the new me, who will always be disciplined and inspired.” 

But what about actually finishing the notebook once you’ve started? 

Korkki believes that “people lose steam because the idea of perfect writing in their heads never matches what they end up putting on the page, and they become discouraged.” 

I can certainly relate to all that! It's only now that I've accepted that notebooks have the most utility to me when I'm not too "precious" about them, and when I prioritize using them frequently over needing the words I put in them to be particularly high quality (or to be done in especially neat handwriting), that I actually can use them up. With my writing and journaling style, anything I handwrite tends to be in a very stream-of-consciousness style, and I never really go back to read over it. Once I've written out whatever I was thinking, the words are no longer as meaningful to me. 

3. // I was glad to see that one of my favorite bloggers, previously at To Universe, with Love, is back and newly blogging at Of a Certain Vintage. Recently, Luxe did a good entry about the importance of knowing one's values when making money-related decisions. In some ways, at least to me (a major homebody and also a fairly shy introvert), it was also an entry about introversion, about choosing not to do (or spend money on) certain kinds of social outings. 

Please note that this post contains affiliate links that could result in a commission, typically a few cents, for me if you click. Thank you for your support!

4. // There are a few small items from the Nordstrom Anniversary Sale that I have bought in the past, and that I think could be a good deal: I got these Nordstrom-branded cubic zircona stud earrings last year, on Kathy's recommendation. They're a solid choice, and more importantly for their being a good value, Nordstrom does not seem to discount them at any other time of year. 

A lot of the more interesting items in the sale are from the beauty section: I recently bought one of those Slip silk pillowcases to see if it would help reduce the tangles and split ends my hair's been prone to. (It helps noticeably, but it definitely isn't a miracle product either. I'm satisfied with my purchase, but I won't really be able to compare it to any other silk pillowcase because I don't plan to buy any others to try.) Nordstrom is offering sets of two Slip pillowcases at a substantial discount, in white or beige. 

Link List: A Sense of Duty

A photo I took of someone else's super-fluffy, super-cute, and super-friendly dog on the commuter train to the suburbs. It seems that my M.O. with finding photographs for these link lists posts is basically just to use photos of other people's pets!

1. // Along the lines of some links I shared a few months back, on the theme of people around my age who prioritize and factor in the need (whether present or future) to financially assist their parents, and/or some of their extended family members into their money management plans, here's a recent article from The Cut that I enjoyed. It's based on an interview with Lily, who also blogs. Although our life circumstances might be substantially different (among other things, I also chose my undergraduate school due to its offering me, by far, the best need-based financial aid package available to me, but I was also a second-generation child of immigrant parents who had become fairly well-established and prosperous while I was small), and the same is true about the nature and extent of our expected future obligations to our parents, a lot of the ideas she shared still resonate with me.

When I think about what steps to take with my career in the long term, I feel on occasion that some of my desires conflict somewhat with my sense of duty. In the abstract, and completely separately from this topic, I feel some obligation to try and stay in certain more intense segments of my profession, the kind where Asian-Americans are extraordinarily underrepresented, to try and pave the way for future generations of attorneys like me. More concretely, and far more relevant here, whenever I consider the prospect of making future career decisions that would likely result in significantly lower compensation than some of my other viable options, I wonder slightly if I'd be doing a disservice to my hypothetical future children, my parents when they need me someday, and also potentially to some of my extended family members of more modest means, for whom a relatively small amount of money by US standards could make a big difference in Taiwan. This sense of duty isn't necessarily enough to substantially change my plans, and there are tons of other factors also at play, but it's on my mind.

2. // Speaking of things to do with my profession, there was a discussion on Corporette recently about law school student loan payoff timelines, particularly for people working in biglaw and biglaw-ish. 

The discussion also turned to the always mysterious and never particularly transparent norms and practices surrounding when biglaw associates eventually get the "up or out' discussion, generally with very little warning and often when the firm has pretty much already decided to give you your walking papers. Both of these topics are ones where it's hard to get reliable, "real talk"-style information, so anytime there's an opportunity to get more insight, I pay attention, even if I always take anonymous internet comments with a grain of salt. 

3. // This article at Vox's The Goods about the author's affection for, and memories bound up in, the soon-to-be-shuttered Dressbarn, and about the store's role in her transition, is lovely. 

4. // I'd been holding on to this r/femalefashionadvice link, to a discussion from an experienced leatherworker about his trying out a handbag-making class, for a while now. He noted that, with all the time and labor required to make a medium-large-ish bag by hand, it'd only be viable for him to sell them if he priced them at ~$2500 to $3000, and that the raw materials by themselves cost ~$600. 

When I saw Jess's recent post about getting started with leatherworking and her first few projects, I thought hey, it's a great time now to share these links! I'm always in awe of when people are able to make and create things. (At present, I definitely don't have the physical space to get into sewing, the creative hobby I'm most interested in. There's no room for a sewing machine in my apartment! Even if I only ended up learning some basic skills, like how to hem my own pants, I'd be thrilled.) 

5. // And now for a few interesting things over at other blogs I follow: Elaine's recent post about starting to use a safety razor is helpful, this is one of those small moves to lower-waste that I've thought about, but have put off because it's sort of intimidating; Revanche hosted a good discussion regarding how our views on money can be deeply affected by how we were raised; Michelle's discussion of some possible reasons for feeling career burn out really resonated with me (I couldn't relate as much to some of the more recent viral discussions about burn out elsewhere online); and I enjoyed M's May wardrobe roundup.

One thing M mentioned was how a social media platform or online community (in her case, r/femalefashionadvice, and in my case, some of the discussions of slow or "ethical" fashion that seem to mostly take place on Instagram, and also various money-centric discussions across multiple platforms) can have its own distinctive culture or set of commonly-held assumptions that can make a participant or observer preemptively defensive, or a little insecure, when thinking or writing about certain topics. This is an idea I've long been interested in, given all the online communities and social media discussions I follow as a mostly-passive observer (it's just on blogs that I'm a super-active commenter!). 

My own writing style has always had a natural tendency towards maybe-excessive disclaimers, lots of extra and possibly-unnecessary context, and things like that. It's just the way my brain works, and I'm also long-winded by nature. Law school may have amplified some of my writing habits that can sound defensive on the page, though law school also made me a more concise and direct writer. In any case, because of work, I can't help but think about and take into account potential rebuttals or counterpoints whenever I write, because I've been trained to always write with opposing parties and the court in mind. 

Link List: On Shopping Diaries and Costume Design

My sister's dog is such a goof! I haven't been able to visit my sister for a while, as we spent our vacation time traveling to Maui together with our mom instead, so I borrowed/stole this photo from her.

It's been a while since my last link list post! K and I don't really have any further travels planned this summer, even though things tend to quiet down at the office (many of our colleagues try to get out early on Fridays to start driving out of the city for the weekend). Although work never fully stops with our biglaw and biglaw-ish projects, summer still tends to be a period where the pace of everything slows down because so many people, whether opposing counsel, our colleagues, or even the judge assigned to the case, will take vacation at various times.

I haven't really found any great long-form pieces to recommend in recent weeks, so this link list is a bit of a grab bag. Some of the most interesting things I've seen recently and that I want to discuss are actually based on comments from other people on Reddit or Corporette! 

1. // I thought this comment on Reddit about the social and economic pressures in the US that might lead so many people to multi-level-marketing ("MLM") or pyramid schemes was thoughtful and observant. I've done some work recently that involves reviewing MLM advertising material, and well, let's just say the language of it can start sounding a lot like the language used in some FIRE discourse online or on some money blogs (the more heavily commercialized one that I don't link to or recommend). While the recommendations made by each type of content are different, they share the trait of relying heavily on the siren's song of "financial freedom" and being able to spend more of your time on the things you care about rather than a 9-to-5 job, let's just say.

For more information on the MLM side of things, I highly recommend The Dream podcast, which gets particularly good and interesting in the later episodes, though it's a bit of a slow burn at the start. You would not believe the people in high places who have been known to do promotional work for or otherwise profit from big MLMs like Amway. 

2. // I was surprised to see that so many people on r/blogsnark enjoy a popular Instagram account (things.i.bought.and.liked) that's basically just a shopping diary, albeit from someone with a witty sense of humor than the average, it sounds like! Then again, I really enjoy shopping diary-like content (in some lights, that's even what my blog is half the time), as long as I feel that I can "trust" the reviews of the person behind it to be "true" to who they are and their tastes. Sure, our tastes and shopping budgets will all be different, but ideally, after reading a person's writing and commentary over a few weeks or months, I get a sense of what they like, whether we're similar clothes or shoe sizes or have similar tastes for some things, and how much their recommendations will work for me. 

3. // This isn't exactly something I would only have learned about from Corporette, but one of the topics that came up recently was that silly non-story about some of the legal fees Senator Warren previously charged. The rate was $675/hour, which I can assure you was probably modest for someone of that  level of expertise, and was also "at or below market rate" for the nature of the work being done, as people attested to in legal filings contemporaneous with when those fees were charged. Representative Ocasio-Cortez had a good take on it (venture into the comments on that tweet at your own peril, however).  

Anyway, I can personally vouch for standard biglaw billing rates these days generally starting at ~$450/hour for freshly graduated first-year associates (though it may be that there are other arrangements between firms and their corporate clients that mean the clients aren't paying for every single hour worked by first-years) and ranging up to over $1000/hour for various partners, not all of whom even have the specialized experience or credentials she did. Incidentally, the last time I recall biglaw-ish legal bills being in the news was in connection to the seizure of Michael Cohen's files last year, where the special master (a former federal judge who'd retired to the private sector) charged ~$700/hour, which is, quite frankly, likely also below market for an attorney of her stature. What was unusual there is that partners typically don't spend that many hours working on any single matter in such a short time, as they delegate a lot of the time-consuming work to their associates (they supervise those associates closely, though). 

4. // Now this is a super-old story that I never got around to sharing, but I enjoyed this Vox piece about how a few different authors approached "designing" a particular outfit for their book characters. One of the authors featured is Kevin Kwan, discussing Astrid from Crazy Rich Asians.

Recently, I've been thinking a lot about how I would describe my personal style, and how to make sure new purchases fit into it, so that I will love and put to good use anything I buy going forward. I personally find it helpful to think about this from a more "costume design" perspective: What kind of character would I be if my life were a movie or TV show, and how do my clothes, shoes, and accessories reflect that? Thus, I found this particular article, from an actual costume designer about how she approaches her job, to be super-interesting. (Sadly, it didn't attract much discussion when shared at r/femalefashionadvice.) 

5. // A few fun links from other blogs I follow: Maja has raised a remarkable collection of houseplants; I definitely learned some new things when reading about Jess's home-buying process, sadly, it'll be quite some time before we can think about buying a home; and Bitches Get Riches wrote some good food for thought on what types of spending from their parents felt or didn't feel impactful on their childhoods. Though one challenge with trying to make plans around such ideas is that I'm not sure one can easily predict what will be helpful to a particular child. I hated sports and all athletic activity, and also didn't particularly enjoy the idea of being a "team player" over the pursuit of, er,  personal glory. But I feel like I'd have ended up learning some valuable new skills if my parents had pushed a team sport on me for at least a few years. I'd have shrieked and complained about it to high heaven, though, and would have hated it. I certainly wouldn't have had a chance of acknowledging or appreciating the benefits until sometime in my mid or late 20s, at the earliest!

I also enjoyed the discussion of people's favorite colors for their wardrobe over at Talia's. I don't have restrictive rules about colors. If it looks good on my skin tone and can be worn with the other things I own (that one's not too difficult, because most of my clothes are neutrals), I'll be happy to wear it. Of course, just having those somewhat open-ended two "rules" or guidelines can end up being quite restrictive in practice. A lot of the colors that get popular or trendy some years (anything pastel, almost all coral shades, and most colors in the orange or yellow families, even if one of my favorite coats is bright red-orange) tend not to work well on my skin tone. My wardrobe definitely ends up heavily favoring certain colors (neutrals, darker jewel-tones) over others. 

Does anyone else think about their personal style from a more costume design-type perspective? Do you shop for your closet with any "rules" or guidelines about colors in mind?