I’m going crazy.

First thing: Make as much stuff as possible disappear, so my home looks presentable. So people who are not me can enter and go “Ahhh, I can see myself living here!” Seems simple enough, right? Well, add to that the responsibility of choosing which things I will put in storage and which will come with me to live in a small southern town for 2 years. Of course those 2 years will be punctuated by frequent trips to NYC, SF, and hopefully a summer internship in London followed by a semester in Barcelona. So the wardrobe can’t be PURE country. But it wa heartbreaking to pack an entire U-Haul XL box of shoes to put in storage because I really don’t wear them and/or they’re not in style. Shoes I can’t sell because they will be cool again, and are really good collector’s items. This right after I just bought a cute little folk-art sign for my closet that says “PMS: Purchase More Shoes.” It just looks silly next to half as many shoe boxes as there were before.It really makes me panic, thinking “What if I NEED those patent leather thigh-high stilettos sometime?” True, I probably haven’t worn them in 10 years, but still.

What really makes it painful is that it feels like I’m packing away the wardrobe of my youth, to be replaced with a (gag) collection of appropriate suits and sensible, unintimidating shoes. When I was in high school my main criteria for a career was that it not involve dressing like a clone. Now that I am all grown up, my priorities have changed, and I have been able to dress as freaky as I please since 1984. Sure, one of the cool things about being an MBA is that you can afford to buy cool European designer suits, so I won’t be forced into a future of Ann Taylor, but it still sucks to think of packing away the pink frilly gowns and metallic leather…

Here’s one from 2000, checkin’ out the hip-hop exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. I will have pink hair again, dammit. The woman who helped convince me to take the plunge was a 70 y.o. receptionist at an art gallery in Paris. So if I have to wait until retirement, or until pink hair becomes so ubiquitous that even executives have it, so be it.