The Uniform

I've tried to maintain the fiction (at least in my own head) that practicality trumps appearance for me. But, like most other things in my life, this seems to be about control. I do enjoy spending time on my appearance, but I don't like having to spend time on my appearance, if that makes sense. I feel the same way about eating and sleeping, honestly. If I could do them only when I chose to... well, I'd add yet another prioritization problem to my life. It would probably just frustrate me.

In order to take control of "time spent on appearance", one of the things I did was self-impose a uniform. I've just realized that this experiment started in 2007, although I didn't really make a big deal out of it until 2009. It started with black button-down shirts. It doesn't matter to anyone but me, but it makes me happy, and I've slowly standardized my wardrobe over the past couple of years so I have different weights of the same outfit for different weather conditions. I find a particular garment I like and buy 2 weeks worth of it to get through the laundry/dry cleaning cycle.

The factors that define the uniform to me are:

1. Shirt: black, button down, black buttons, breast pocket
2. Trousers: grey, flat front, no cuff, buttoned pockets.
3. Shoes, hat, and belt: black
4. Optional Jacket: matching grey suit jacket only
5. Overcoats: black

This has been causing me some small amount of consternation over the past three months since I started my new job. It's a tie-wearing office. This isn't a problem, per se, but I just can't get comfortable with ties and shirt sleeves. Honestly, I'd rather go jacket and no tie than tie and no jacket. But I wore a jacket the first day, and my boss came and (jokingly, I think) said we'd have to "do something about that." I switched to sweaters. I can live with sweater and tie. Until we hit mid-April, and heat became an issue. Now I'm on (black) vest and tie.

It still felt like the "uniform" to me, but my therapist (who I've been seeing since late 2009, so she's only ever known me in the uniform) commented that between the sweaters and the vests, it felt like I was adding a dizzying amount of variety to my wardrobe. I'm surprised to find that this comment bothered me.

Maybe that's why I haven't talked about the uniform online before (at least, as far as Google and I can tell). Committing to it out loud makes it feel like something other people can judge. When I've mentioned it to people who asked (and when drinking, to people who haven't), their first response is often to look for exceptions.

I propose that the right question to ask when confronted with someone else's arbitrary-self-imposed-retrictions isn't "when do you break it?" but "why is it fun?"