Dressing for creativity

You hear time and again that we are what we eat. Literally, physically. But are we also what we wear? How we dress and present ourselves to ourselves and the world? For me, if I go a number of days wearing only yoga clothes, I start feeling not so good about myself, mentally. Like, what is wrong with you girl, get yourself dressed like you care!

And I do care about clothes and style and fashion. But sometimes I tell myself it doesn’t matter because I’m only running my son to school or sitting around the house looking for a job. No one is going to see me. Lately I’ve noticed this tendency is drifting into my public interactions. Running to the post office. Picking up some groceries. It’s a slippery slope.

So when I got to this particular part in Elizabeth Gilbert’s book about creativity, Big Magic,  I found myself nodding along. The chapter is called Tristram Shandy Chimes In and she tells us about a novel called Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne, who wrote in the eighteenth century (I love how diverse and well read Elizabeth Gilbert is so she can pass along these little tidbits). The title character is a writer and has writer’s block and his ‘cure’ for it is to clean himself up by shaving and dressing himself up as though he were about to go on an important date. He was dressing up for himself and his creativity.

A million times yes! You are only as fresh as your last shower and if I were being honest sometimes this is not every day for me. I will do the sniff test, brush out my hair, brush my teeth (I’m not that for gone!) and pop into some easy around the house clothes (or stay in my pj’s because what could be more easy around the house?). I will pull myself together before the end of the day because I likely will have left the house or at least made it to the gym. I wouldn’t want my husband to come home and see me in the same thing I had on when he left!

But today is not that day. I will shower and dress and go out into the world presenting my best self to my fellow job seekers at Job Club. And then I will come home and get creative whether it be by writing some more, baking or working on my vision board.

Do you dress for yourself and your creativity?

MC