Hi everyone! First off, I want to let you guys know that I’m beyond psyched that there are people who have made reading this blog a part of their Friday routines. Thank you so much from the very pits of my red squishy still beating heart! I’ll have moments where I feel uninspired and then someone sends me a message or writes a comment about MyXXFLY and I’m reinvigorated all over again. This project has brought all kinds of focus and personal purpose to my life and the reciprocity only makes it better.
This week, we’re in one corner of the urban 500+ acre Amelia Earhart Park located North of Hialeah. If you’ve ever visited a park in Miami-Dade county, Amelia Earhart is like any of them, except cranked up to 11. There are your typical recreation areas like kid and pet friendly playgrounds, lakes where you can pedal around in an enormous swan boat, soccer fields and picnic shelters for all your 3rd, 4th, and 5th birthday party needs. What you will be hard-pressed to find at any other park in town however are Amelia’s mountain biking trails, a wakeboarding area where you can live out all of your extreme water-sports dreams (complete with cables to fling you around like a sack of shit) and a beautifully kept frisbee golf area, which is where we got in the way of players to take some fly photos.
Our resident photographer took a terrible tumble worthy of Humpty Dumpty himself just hours before this shoot. His right shoulder popped out of place, and his right ankle (the good ankle) left him hobbling. So lets take a minute to marvel at the stellar job he did despite having one good arm and one “good” leg to work with. Frank: the real MVP.
The other star of the show? The outfit, but definitely not for the reasons you suspect. I bought this necklace for my college graduation party about 7 years ago, the earrings are probably as old as I am and were a hand-me-down from my mom. The skirt was thrifted over 4 years ago, the top was a tank that I cut into a crop-top and the bag was a thrift find from a trip I took to Pittsburgh 2 years ago. So why are these details relevant? Notice how long I’ve had all of the items for? Impressed? Well, hold your enthusiasm, maybe you shouldn’t be.
This outfit pretty much sums up my life. See, you may or may not know this about me, but the propensity toward hoarding and excess is in my genes and was part of my environment for a very long time. I lived in a house that knew no empty drawers. Negative space? The fuck is negative space. The motto of “el que guarda siempre tiene” or “those who save, always have” was the cornerstone of my upbringing. In theory, it’s sound advice, the classic grasshopper and the ant story, prepare for the worst and save for a rainy day. In practice however? That lesson can be taken to extremes, and saving a cocktail dress for a special occasion can turn into never getting rid of anything, even if it doesn’t fit, even if you don’t like it anymore, even if you’ll never wear it again. Eso es un pecado, a cardinal sin.
Now, I’ve been whittling away at my closet since right around the time I started this blog. The items you see in this outfit are some of my favorites, and they’re keepers precisely because they are. I, like many women my age, fucking love clothes. The thing about a great dress, or a new pair of shoes, is that the reward is instant. You put the item on, you look awesome, you feel fly, it’s great right? Well yes, but, why did you want that new dress? Was there an occasion that nothing in your wardrobe was adequate for, did you wear through your only black pair of jeans, or were you bored, restless, depressed, and “that shit was on sale and hello I’m happy again for the next 30 seconds ‘cause look at my ass in these pants”? By simply being aware of our motivations we can start to cut back on habits that damage us. We can break out of cycles that leave us empty and unfulfilled.
Now, I don’t know what motivates you or your sense of style, maybe you care about what you wear, maybe you give no fucks, but I know that my motivation for a long time was aspirational. I’d buy, or inherit, or keep, something beautiful because it would be exactly what I needed to motivate myself to lose 20, 40, 80 pounds. “Imagine yourself in those jeans Yesenia. Imagine how better your life will be and how awesome you’ll feel when you make it into those goddamn sexy-ass jeans!” Cool. Except that’s bullshit. You deserve to feel awesome now, because now is all you have. Don’t buy into the propaganda, life is more than the better, newer, faster x, y, or z.
So about 6 months ago I said fuck it. Love it or leave it. Use it or lose it. My closet is still aspirational, but in a different way. How do I aspire to look and feel right now? Not a year from now, not eventually, but right this very fucking second because it’s Wednesday morning and I need an outfit for work today, not when I’m thinner, not when that skirt fits, but now.
The last few months have been a time of cleansing for me. A healing that started on the inside many years ago, and brought me to the point in my life where I realized these things I kept and cherished and refused to get rid of have no value. Do they have a cost? Sure, $4.99, $2.49 with a yellow tag on Tuesdays, but absolutely no value. Value is what we all have intrinsically. There’s value in learning, in experience, in sharing, in community. You may value your possessions, but these things are fleeting, and much less valuable than your time. The less things you have to sort and clean and organize the more time you have for living. My long term goal? To have the ability to strap all of my belongings to my back if necessary, to live more and have less. To lead by example, and to help others (especially my family) see how much our possessions bog us down. So that’s why this outfit is the star of the show, for what it symbolizes. It’s the fruits of my labor toward a major downsize, and proof that simple can still be fly.
Next week we’re celebrating Nicaraguan Independence Day! Follow us @MyXXFLY on your favorite social media outlet for sneak peeks of our special guest. Do you have your own struggle or hoarding/downsizing story? Share it below in the comments or #MyXXFLY wherever hashtags are a thing. Have a wonderful week and as always, keep your double-x fly.
