Sweet Seventeen

Yesterday, I turned 17!! That's so wild considering that when How Fitting was founded, I was at the ripe age of 13 with no actual sense of self (not that I fully have one now, it's improvement.). It really just is amazing how oddly different and similar I am from the seventh grade version of myself imprinted on the Internet. Forever. Ugh.

Seventeen is a rather odd and awkward age to turn. First off, there's so much in between. It feels like I've been in between forever. In the words of Francine Pascal, "I am seventeen. The good things about seventeen is that you’re not sixteen. Sixteen goes with the word sweet, and I am so far from sweet." and I take some sort of connection with that- a lot of being seventeen is no longer being sixteen. I'm on the cusp of legal adulthood and I'm nervous and excited and happy to just kind of hang back and be seventeen and not sixteen and do adult things such as driving a car (horrible at it. terrible. never good idea.) yet fully shying away from anything with unappealing responsibility. 

Along with this is the copious amounts of media surrounding the age of seventeen. I mean if we want to bring it back to my infamous emo days, there's an All Time Low song that says, "stay seventeen" and for some reason I was like "god I really can't wait to be seventeen because of this shitty song"- with magazines titles and lines from Abba songs, seventeen seemed like some sort of club to thirteen year old Ann. Television and music and film and photography made sixteen a rather pressured year for me to constantly have fun and be spontaneous and "be sixteen" be sixteen. be sixteen. And I don't want to feel constantly like I'm wasting some "precious" year (I'll honestly forget in twenty years) whenever I'm not be cinematically worthy. That's a boring and exhausting way to live. 

I sobbed the night before my birthday. I was organizing my DVD collection and fantasizing over what I'm spending my first paycheck on (as in a JOB. I have a job that PAYS. How crazy is that??) and something stupid triggered it like my phone charger breaking or not being able to find the lens cap to one of my cameras and I just broke down. I love birthdays. I hate my birthday. Similar to my feeling of pressure to have a grand ol' time at sixteen years old, I always feel like my birthday has to be some sort of magical, wonderful, day and I hate that. I hate expectations. Along with this was the actual fear of aging. It feels like I've fast forwarded through everything and now here I am and I don't really know what to do with that. 

The actual daytime piece of my birthday was quite plain and simple and average. It was Kol Nidrei (eve of Yom Kippur) that night and so my parents (who were observing the holiday) did not go out to dinner with me, which I was quite emo over at first but in the end, there was really no point in getting upset over trivial things like this. I shot a couple of photos of my grand entrance into the Great Seventeen Club (aka photographic masturbation) on my stuffed animal covered bed. I ended up being quite typical and watching The Naked Brothers Band Movie on the tv I stole off the side of the road that one time   as I do for every other milestone of my life. 

me holding up one of Ben's gifts

Actual night of the big one seven: I cried. Multiple times. I ended up going out for burritos with Anh and Ben and sitting in the park dipping chips into rice and beans and reading through mixtape playlists and eating sponge cake and being upstairs in my bedroom playing guitar and hanging upside down off my bed. All very surreal.

bedroom scene 

Overall, I'm not sure where I'm at with birthdays. I guess I've reconciled the birthday curse and understand the lack of perfection within them and the triviality of it all. In the use of a cliche, overused, Bradbury quote, "I'm seventeen and I'm crazy. My uncle says the two always go together. When people ask your age, he said, always say seventeen and insane." I hope to take this year to become less impulsive, twitchy, and restless and all the more. 

sweet 17: gifts

C-C-C-Changes

Hey. Things have been off and on and strange and stressful and so much is different, including my appearance, yet the same. That's quite odd since the last piece I wrote was a little less than a month ago but five inches of hair in a trashcan later, I look a little like this:

I don't believe I've ever looked more gross and more beautiful. I look much much more healthy however and I am! Junior year has been kind of wild within its first month and the wildest part is that this is the best I've been doing in school. Ever. The thing is I love going to school, I'm just never good at it. I hope to stay in school for the rest of my life honestly.

As the school year started, I've been shedding my summer with it and this sadly meant my departure from ethantheboyfriend. We left it on incredibly good terms which is rather out of the ordinary for me. Most of my breakups end in a bout of tears followed by months of pent up resentment towards each other. I rehearsed my breakup speech over and over again too and none of it went as planned, I hoped for more anger. I know how to work with anger as opposed to understanding. Anyways, I'm doing good after this ending; there are some random bouts of emptiness that are all superficial however. I'm doing good. I'm doing good. I've been around the block with breaking up (only in the corner of being the instigator however), and have just been focusing on myself which sounds corny, but in essence is quite nice. Thinking bout writing an actual blogpost about this though due to the various relationships How Fitting has encountered and how seemingly cavalierly they seem to end.

Going off that topic, I've finally decided I've got to start writing on this at least once every two weeks again. I know I know I say this over and over again but I honestly need to. In all honestly, How Fitting has been the only real constant in my life (exaggeration: I mean my hobbies/work) since I was thirteen years old and that seems a shame to drop. There's so many holes from when I dropped this site during my mass of depression last year and that's not particularly cool!

What have I been doing what have I been doing: Mad Sounds has been a big thing recently. Meaning I'm writing for them every week which is *crazy*. It's a lot. Along with that is my recent post on Written Citizen about Christian Siriano SS17 because OHMYGOD I went to fashion week and didn't even talk about it (which I do every year but somehow didn't get around to ???) !! My NYFW outfits (which is long long overdue) should be up tomorrow. This is a high level of disorganization I'm going crazy over.
Anyways, I've missed this space as always. Let's see how this goes.

(also hope this signature change is appreciated due to the amount of MySpace aesthetic websites I had to visit to make this)

She's Been Gone Since That Summer

As the Summer has been winding down, so has the times I've actually left the house (procrastinated summer assignments are slowly killing me). Enjoy me celebrating and documenting the last hoorahs of the summer before my junior year (whoa that's wild).

roller disco!!

Pier One rink in Brooklyn with my sister- I was just getting good when I fell (I felt it for the next 2 weeks. fun.)

Me looking actually presentable in SoHo after a good three hours of skating. 

Me and Fee!! The true love of my life came back to the city after over a year- a lot of gossip and coffee at The Bean was shared. It's incredible to think the two of us have been friends for nearly four years and how weird and wonderful it has been to see the two of us grow up and into ourselves. 

Ethan The Boyfriend in Dizzy's after returning from Amsterdam. Beautiful as always, complete with a beard. 

very very horrible photo of brooklyn's hottest couple. 

kind of hilariously horrible photo of me caught in the rain after seeing a movie. Photo and jacket credit to ethantheboyfriend. 

After being separated for far too long, I was reunited with my best friends ever, Ben and Anh. Here is a picture of me and Ben basically creating Cole Sprouse's greatest work. 

Ben in Washington Sq Park looking beautiful as always. 

Actual angel in my life, Anh, reacting to a keychain from Ben that reads "Bahama Mama"

Anh being a pixie in the digital age. 

RIP Summer 2016. 

*title from the only good song ever, "Summer Girls", by LFO. 

Heartbeat In the Brain (picto-diary)

This weekend has been kind of surreal and wonderful and beautiful and so many other positive adjectives that still can't do these memories justice. Prepare for an array of rooftop views.

Summer Shandy (Picto-Diary)

    Things have been pretty hectic and exciting and incredible lately. Since my last post, about a week ago, I have moved to the Upper East Side, began dating someone new and wonderful, and found a tv on the side of the road with my sister.

Me with my most prized possession. It only plays DVDs so I had to dig up some of my thrift shop finds from years ago, needless to say, the Naked Brothers Band Movie is much better on disc.

The NBB film is actually incredibly (and non ironically) good. There's just enough drama and hidden messages (ex: Alex's soda drinking addiction after the band splits) that watching it for the first time in awhile is an extremely enjoyable experience. 10/10 would recommend.

Just a pretty pic of the state of my room currently. (ft: a dog cup a person I went on 2 dates with gave me, my dead cactus, Sally, and an empty soda bottle filled with dollar store fake flowers).

HUGE perk of my place is how close to Central Park I've been (about a ten minute walk)- these townhouses by the park entrance are so dreamy.

Shot of my friend on one of the rocks in CP. Prior to a conversation of various restaurants we'd take bullets for (Yummy Taco and Amish Market were top of the list).

My two best friends in the whole wide world, Anh and Ben. We'd gone to the Whitney fifteen minutes before closing and just ended up looking at books and heading to Chelsea Market. I love these people so much honestly. Wow.

David Bowie memorial outside the American Apparel (ew) in SoHo. Ground control to Major Tom.

Leslie Lohman LGBT Art Gallery. I hadn't been since December (??) and went to their stunning gallery opening on Friday. Such beautiful pieces on gender and identity this month.

Me and a couple buds completely beat at Monk Vintage in Williamsburg. Long day running around and I felt as though I could just melt into that couch.

Growth

   Hi. I started this blog allllllll the way back in 2013 when wearing vests and skinny jeans were cool. Yeah. 2013 was kind of a weird year for everyone I guess and I'm sure anyone living presently in 2016 feels differently about themselves. I'm not really sure everyone has a thirteen year old version of themselves living on the Internet currently. Because I do. I say this with such seriousness that How Fitting is something I take such incredible pride in and kind of get more protective than I should over. I love this blog. I love to have somewhere that feels so much like "home" to write in. However, I have grown up. Not only has my style changed, but also my views, passions, and overall self for that matter. I'm a teenager, I'm supposed to do that.
   This year has been pretty rough for How Fitting. Every other post seems like an apology for not writing and I guess that's not an ideal to run. I've been writing though. I've been writing SO much for so many people, it's always been my "dream" to work for an online publication and now I work for three. And I LOVE that. I'm writing stuff that I'm in love with and I'm in love with writing. So why have I been doing none of it here? I soon realized it was due to pressure. I'm scared of the ever so personal audience How Fitting has recruited and all the people I don't want to look embarrassing in front of. I'm terrified of that.

   The idea of not having a blog though made me feel immensly empty in a way- I need a space for writing that's MINE so I took to finding it and in the process, created a Tumblr blog called Glitter Vulture that I'm really really excited about to be honest. When putting together GV, I began with the idea of abandoning How Fitting but that really hurt. I hated the idea of leaving behind this three year project I've fallen in love with over the years, it didn't seem right.
   So here's the deal: I'm not leaving HF and I'm not leaving GV either, I have so many ideas and style inspirations why not have TWO blogs?? To clear things up, GV is a more metropolitan take on my style, expect strictly beauty, lifestyle, and style posts (a little more serious than here). And for HF, I intend to stay the same. Keeping with more photos that I really love like me sitting in a backyard holding plastic flowers and feminist essays and various Harry Styles fangirling.

This is the last apology post I'm making. More coming soon (at least) once a week along with better content on both blogs.
Much love,

sad fuzz

    LONG break. Longest one I've taken from here. Wow. Lots been happening, lots is in the works. I think I've been so busy with so many different publications the thought of focusing on my own was terrifying. It's still kinda terrifying. Anyways, while I was gone, this thing turned 3 years old and oh my that is so so weird. I mean when I first started How Fitting, I was 13 years old and in 7th grade and not only has my music taste and style changed, but just my overall personality. It's quite funny and embarrassing to look back at some of this stuff. As I said, I've been on some adventures lately and just wanted to check in on what I've been up to. I've missed this.

 Art in the Lower East side. I ended up seeing a show at ABC No Rio with a couple of friends and there's such an endless amount of murals in the area- also gave me a large bit of nostalgia from going on a date and walking from Astor to Soho to Greenwich back to Astor to Union Square and finally ending up in the 1st Ave Garden; this was back in October and the murals were just being painted (I distinctly remember that woman) and seeing it all up and finished was kind of surreal and beautiful.

 It happened. Somehow me and one of my close friends ended up at the 5th Ave Build a Bear. I've never felt more alive ever.

Dreams really do come true! Though my deep and ever growing hatred of Times Square is still very much alive, we ended up having to drop into the Guitar Center to pick up strings for my classical (that is still very much broken) and this fine establishment was right next door!

Frank!! This is kind of embarrassing and with me having panic attacks and my anxiety was on high the entire day, I couldn't really call this a gr8 night but overall good last hoorah of being emo (spoiler alert: it was just a phase).
Anyways, wait a sec for real posts to be coming out soon.