Enough by Patrick Rhone

Author:Patrick Rhone [Rhone, Patrick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781105595011
Publisher: Lulu.com
Published: 2012-03-14T16:00:00+00:00

Uniform

If honor be your clothing, the suit will last a lifetime; but if clothing be your honor, it will soon be worn threadbare.

– William Arnot

The change of seasons always gets me thinking about clothing — fall especially.

I have always loved fall for so many reasons. My birthday is in the fall. I’m one of those people who starts to break a sweat whenever the temperature passes eighty degrees so I love the Minnesota fall climate — cool and dry. I love the changing of the leaves. I love our regular attempt to pick as many Honeycrisp apples from the best local orchard we can afford. When it comes to clothing, I love that fall gives me reasons to have more pockets. Finally, a place for my keys more comfortable than my right front pants pocket.

That said, it is somewhat strange that this time of year causes me to think about how to reduce my wardrobe. How to streamline it to a simpler array of choices. How to create a well-balanced sensible default of options. A uniform, if you will.

This is not to say I want the extreme simplicity of, say, Steve Jobs. His final choice of black mock-turtle neck shirt, denim jeans, and New Balance sneakers was practically a self-made religion. I'm just not built that way. I enjoy expressing creativity. Even in my few years spent in Catholic school, despite the imposed uniform, I always found a way to express myself. One can say a lot with the right pair of socks.

No, what I'm looking for is less a uniform and more of a guideline. One that will allow enough flair to be interesting but not so much that I spend several minutes staring at my wardrobe wondering what to wear.

Some of the self-editing I already do. For instance, the single drawer for my jeans. The same rule applies for my chinos and my t-shirts.

So, I have started to think, why not use this as a starting point? A base to build a uniform on. Perhaps, I have five chinos, five jeans, and ten t-shirts in various basic colors as the base. For fall, I add a select number, let's say five, of interesting sweaters. By interesting I mean unique, well made, and creative. I already have some that fit this criteria. A couple of others would make that number complete.

So, why am I sharing this stuff with you? Well, perhaps the change of seasons is the right time to be making some changes of your own. Perhaps you might want to think about ways to find balance and remove a little bit of friction in your life on a daily basis by making some sensible defaults of your own. One does not have go to Saint Jobs of Cupertino Catholic School to find a basic uniform that works. Perhaps your uniform might be to always find a creative way to buck a trend or break the status quo.

I recently saw Seth Godin and he wears two completely different but singularly bright and crazy colored socks on each foot.

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