Sparkling Isolation – Day 131

I don’t have a thing to wear.

The struggle is real. I have plenty of clothes, but every day I struggle with the thought, “Why bother?” The only thing that seems to keep me wearing decent clothes is the fact that I have seemingly-endless online meetings.

Of course, that means that most of the time the only thing I worry about is my shirt. I can honestly say that I have not gone pantsless during any meetings – at least I am always wearing pants. What I realize, however, is that I wear the same three or four pair of pants over and over.

I have three pair of jeans and three different colors of shorts. In the past 131 days of quarantine, the only times I have not worn one of those six pair of pants have been three rare occasions where I knew I wear going out to a decent restaurant and wanted to feel slightly more dressed up.

As for tops, most days I just grab the t-shirt that is the closest to the front of my drawer and I tend to wear the same t-shirt for several days in a row before I realize it probably should go into the basket for laundry – or until I spill something on it. For most meetings, I will run into my bedroom and throw on a nice shirt and then swap back to the t-shirt as soon as I’m not on video any longer.

Shoes? Two pair have served me for the majority of this quarantine since I am mostly barefoot at home. I think I wore another pair once – maybe. I don’t recall. Once, I actually wore a nice blue jacket – to dress up the jeans I was wearing – to go out for dinner. That was my one-and-only ‘dress up’ moment since early March.

I do not have a washer/dryer in my apartment, so I have to rely on laundromats for doing my clothes. In the 131 days of quarantine, I have dropped off clothes at a local laundromat six times – and that was largely because I needed to wash sheets and underwear. Doing the math, that means that I don’t go through enough clothes to warrant taking them to a laundromat except every three weeks or so.

I don’t know if there’s a point to this laundry list of items (yes – pun intended). Perhaps the point is that I am depressed by the fact that I don’t have any reason to care about how I look lately. I have some gorgeous suits and beautiful ties and dress shoes. What’s the point? They are just hanging there waiting for something – I’m not sure what.

 I am not renowned for my patience. Waiting, especially for something utterly unknown, is not something that makes me happy.

Still, here I sit not-so-patiently waiting. Waiting.

It’s only Quarantine if it comes from the Quarante province of France. Otherwise, it’s just Sparkling Isolation.