I haven’t written a post in a while, around eight months I believe. A lot has happened since last spring when I last posted. I graduated high school – meaning I have now completed the most basic requirement to be a functioning/productive member of society; that is worth at least one pat on the back. I started/finished one semester of university while maintaining my sanity (more or less) – this is probably a bit more impressive than the graduating high school part. Most importantly however, with a few carefully planned additions to my closet I now have multiple outfits that feature no color sans black – this will probably be my best achievement of 2016 looking back.

Since it’s a new year, I’ve resolved – as if anyone actually keeps resolutions past February – to not be a “loser”, or to at least be a little less of a loser than what I usually am. I don’t necessarily mean loser in a negative connotation, I just can’t think of a better word to encapsulate me: someone who can guesstimate whether a hydrogen atom is in an s/p/d orbital by looking at it’s wavefunction equation, insists on never wearing sweatpants in public (therefore waking up extra early before 9 AM classes to get ready), and makes according to other people crappy one-liners (though personally I feel they’re hilarious). Nerd doesn’t capture my perceived haughtiness and scrub makes me sound incompetent One of my friends says “dork” is a good descriptor of me, but I’m not a big fan.

Thus, I’ve decided I’m going to force myself to write/post here more often because according to my friends (and parents, surprisingly) “you work too much.” Whatever. I already dress well enough to class every day so I’ve started carrying my camera around too. I will admit it is somewhat awkward showing up to lab in a button down, and being the only person making an effort to look nice at 9 AM lecture, but no one said looking good was easy.

Today I had lab from 1-4PM. For those of you who aren’t STEM losers people, you generally show up to lab in a tee shirt (more graphics the better), jeans/leggings, and your worst sneakers. With this in mind, I decided to be inspired by Michael Fassbender from X-Men First Class.

I copped the double rider leather jacket from a neat site called Grailed back in September. Grailed is an eBay tailored for buying/selling men’s clothes; the reason I love it is because 1) it lets me look at expensive designer clothes and fool myself into thinking I could afford it and 2) it lets me buy expensive designer clothes secondhand for more affordable prices.  Going back to the jacket, it’s a full grain double rider made-to-order (MTO) by an unknown maker. The way MTO works is you measure yourself and send the numbers to the company/tailor who then designs the piece to your specific body. When I saw that me and the seller had almost the exact measurements I decided this was the sign from God that I was supposed to buy this jacket, which I did for an absolute steal. I won’t say how much it was exactly because some of you might drop your phone and then blame me for it* but I will say that firsthand leather jackets like these are easily $600+.

It’s a bit late to be saying this, but there’s still a couple weeks of winter left for you to grab as many sweaters as you possibly can because those are most definitely in this fall/winter. This winter I bought almost as many sweaters as I did in all of high school and it’s a shame that I realized so late how awesome they are. According to my pedometer I walk 8-10 miles most days with the majority of that being outside. When it’s cold as heck outside, an undershirt + button down + sweater under a coat/jacket is the combination that keeps me warm for the 15 minute walk from the library to my dorm. You probably noticed it’s a very dark grey instead of black which is a bit disappointing, but this allows it to go with my dark blue jeans as well as my black pair.

Bonus: For all the “one strappers” reading this: lighten the load or start double strapping otherwise well we’ll have to be cremated after death because nobody makes curved coffins to fit our bent spines.

First popularized by the Beatles  in 1960whatever, Chelsea boots are a staple of men’s fashion that have lain dormant for decades before smashing back onto the scene a few years ago. Now everyone from David Beckham to Kanye West and their mothers’ are hopping on the trend train. Whether or not a 1960s rockstar is your look or not, Chelseas are a great boot option because of their simplicity (no laces, just slip them on), wide variety of styles from tan, casual suede or a slightly more formal black leather as I have above. Whichever you pick, the fun factor of your outfits will definitely go through the roof.

As the semester continues I’m positive I’ll be so busy as to where I won’t want to write anymore. Hopefully this time around I force myself to keep posting because looking at the analytics there has been at least one person stumbling into this mess of a blog once every few weeks. It should also help with the whole “not being a loser” resolution of mine, but we’ll see how it goes. In case I stop posting until May, you can probably find me at the Law Library, running laps of Forest Park (I’ve expanded my masochism from just school to physical exercise), or in Lab Sciences 300.

Good luck to all you losers with your goals this year.

-Sid