Pantone Color of the Year & Spring 2019 Collections

When I saw Pantone's 2019 color of the year, my only reaction was to say "it's so preeeettttyyyy!" They have an environmentally-geared explanation behind their choice, but even their reasoning included "also people think this is a pretty color." 

They're correct.

photo via Pantone

A few months ago, I bought curtains that happen to be in this color and I'm still exploring what this might look like on the interior front, but I wanted to share where I've seen this color (or similar) popping up on runways. Most of what I've seen from Spring 2019 shows include variations on shades of orange, not quite coral, but maybe that'll change for the Fall '19 collections. Any step away from nude, deep red, or black in winter-wear will be a much needed reprieve, so I'll take anything at this point.

Tsumori Chisato, Spring 2019. Photo via Vogue

Tsumori Chisato's entire Spring 2019 collection is worth sifting through. Her pieces are inspired from a cruise she took on the Nile, and while the symbolic representations of things she saw are in themselves beautiful (papyrus plants, camels, boats, pyramids, etc.), the vibrant colors and careful embroidery is what sets these apart as some really fun, visually exciting pieces.

Ashish, Spring 2019. Photo via Vogue.

Ashish Gupta has always been incredible at designing clothes we ought to wear while dancing—he makes them functional. (How many designers can you name that changed the shape of sequins they use so that their clothes are easier to dance in?) Designers who create clothes meant to be worn in an 'underground venue' usually end up making them look... dirty. Boring. But not Ashish Gupta. His Spring 2019 collection is edgy, fun, and most importantly, able to be danced in until you are dripping with sweat. How do we know this? Luke Leitch writes that this collection was "worn by models who had water poured over them backstage in order to look authentically sweaty." 

Fuck it up, Ashish. 

Vika Gazinskaya, Spring 2019. Photo via Vogue.

Vika Gazinskaya's cuts have often been androgynous, so seeing the delicate and flowy tailoring in her Spring 2019 collection caught me off guard. She hasn't strayed too far though, because the pieces are always balanced with an oversized or boxy half. Loose-fitting shirts are paired with pleated trousers, delicate skirts are paired with chunky knit sweaters. Male-presenting and female-presenting bodies wear the same items in different ways. But with whimsical prints, this season.

Assimilation is About Power, Not Preferences

I have received and facilitated workplace diversity trainings pretty regularly for 5 years. I have written and refined social justice lessons into my math curriculum. I mention both of these things to say that I have spent more time than many others paying attention to how people engage with identity work. I have spent a lot of time being taught responsible ways of engaging people of various ages in these difficult conversations, and, through trial and error, have learned strategies that help people process these ideas and feelings.

I’m in a workplace diversity training.

I understand why we are doing ice-breakers first, I understand why people who are further along in their identity development are frustrated, I understand the ways in which facilitating this conversation for 144 people is different than 15 people like our facilitator is used to, and so I do what more experienced people did during my first large facilitation experiences--invite people to re-engage, help explain the intentionality behind the structure so people understand the difficulties, etc.

A (white, male, middle-aged) teacher doesn’t like ice breakers, so he is sitting. A couple of people try and encourage him to join, but he doesn’t want to, so we leave him alone. During the discussion following the activity, we begin talking about assimilation. He says, “I feel like I’m being asked to assimilate by participating in this discussion,” and walks out.

It goes unaddressed.

Later, a (male, older, asian) teacher says that he’s offended by the other teacher’s actions, because he trivialized what assimilation actually is and how it affects people. Assimilation means that you experience violence when you try to opt out. Assimilation means you can’t opt out. Assimilation is stripping you away from your culture and punishing you for trying to hold onto any part of it. Assimilation isn’t being asked to participate in something unappealing to you, like having to pick between two desserts when you’d prefer a savory snack. The stakes are different here--what happens when you opt out?

Assimilation means losing your job because you decide to peacefully protest during the anthem.

Assimilation means being receiving death threats from parents when you want to use the bathroom at school, and having to move schools because you are no longer safe.

Assimilation means having your name changed from Carlitos to Jamison and not being returned to your mother when her immigration proceedings are cleared.

Assimilation is colonialism. And it doesn’t exist in a historical vacuum that we can remove ourselves from--it happens now, today, this minute. Some of it happens in our classrooms, which was the whole point of this training. To compare experiencing assimilation to participating in workplace icebreakers is to compare experiencing sexual assault to being assigned to sit next to someone you don’t like on a seating chart.

I wanted to ask the teacher to consider what might happen if a student walked out of their science class because they didn’t want to “assimilate” by doing their bellwork. Would they let the student leave? Would that student get in trouble? Would it negatively impact their grade?

We never defined assimilation before, during, or after this diversity training.

I’m disappointed that the facilitators didn’t address this. I’m wondering if anyone who had already built trust with the teacher followed up with him after he walked out.

And I’m wondering what my role is, in a new community, in deciding when and how to speak up when I notice things like this happening.

Fearless

“Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.”

Marie Curie 

I've chosen to make a lot of changes in my life--I just moved to Seattle, moved in with my love, am taking on new challenges in a new job, and allowing myself the space and time to make lifestyle changes that were hard to do before. Everything is different, and I understand it's objectively good because all these changes are intentional, but it's also terrifying because... well... everything is different.

We're socialized to pathologize negative emotions, and it's a thing I have worked hard to unlearn. It's worth unlearning. It has made a huge difference in the quality of my life, and continues to do so the better I become at it. But it's easier for me to say it's okay to feel scared, sad, frustrated, etc. and much harder to mean it.

For me, meaning it means not denying my emotions their space to unfold and flow out of me. It also means being non-judgmental towards myself as I feel things, and I've had difficulty with this over the past few weeks. On July 30th, Connor and I drove the last 200 miles of our 1000+ mile road trip, got the keys to our apartment, did our walkthrough and inspection, unloaded all our boxes from the van to our second-floor apartment, then immediately drove to IKEA to pick up a list of things I had made before we moved to give us a relatively comfortable start, and tried to go to Home Depot, but it closed by the time we were done.

At the end of the day, I felt like a complete failure.

Some of the things we needed from IKEA were out of stock at that store. We didn’t make it to Home Depot on time. I felt like I was being irresponsible, like I should have planned better, I should have checked to make sure these things were in stock, should have unloaded faster, saved time.

It was ridiculous, because we had already done so much. It was like my first year of teaching--planning everything as much as possible and feeling like I’m not doing enough because I’m only looking at the 2 things that didn’t get done instead of the 100 that did.

Change is challenging. My changes are all choices. And, perhaps because they are intentional, these changes beget pressure. I wanted to make changes, so I did. Now I have to continue to put in the work and follow through with my promises to myself. I must nurture the parts of me that have felt neglected over the past years. I must heal the parts of me that are doubting that I deserve the things I desire.

It doesn't look pretty right now, and it doesn't have to, and I don't know that it ever will. The hard work required to make changes to your life doesn't take away from the value of those changes, nor does it devalue your journey.

I'm realizing more and more that I need to be transparent about how messy this process actually is--to normalize it and take the pressure off myself, to show the steps that are easier to hide, and to share in the little achievements along the way.

Cheers to that. More to come.

How Keeping a Time Diary Changed my Relationship with Stress

I’ve been reflecting lately about how much time I actually use to decompress from things in a day. I'm talking, specifically, about the amount of time I spend processing and recovering from cognitive overload before I can actively engage with things again.

It feels like too much, but I want to make sure, because I've been wrong about this stuff before.

I used to complain about not having enough leisure time when I started teaching. Let me add some context: a 21-year-old, unmarried, childless woman who is able to support herself comfortably with one job complained about not having enough leisure time. I said this while I was at restaurants with friends. I said this while I was on vacation. "But Grishma, you're experiencing leisure right now!" my friends would say, and I would say, "it's not enough." Because I didn’t feel rested, ever, so I assumed I needed more time for leisure (surprise! It was actually depression. Also, learning how to teach well is really hard.)

As I started and continued on my journey of recovering from depression, that nagging feeling of not having enough time stayed with me. When you've spent a long time complaining about something or believing that things that are out of your control are holding you down, it's hard to take stock to see if those feelings are still rooted in day-to-day experiences or a residue of what you're releasing from past experiences.

For so long, I felt like there was never enough time to do fun things, and if something were different, I'd finally start to enjoy my life. At the time, I thought being a teacher was incompatible with feeling rested and energized. While reading Overwhelmed, by Brigid Shulte, I realized that my biggest excuse no longer applied. I was working as a program director at an elementary school that year, and didn't have to work outside of my normal work hours like I did when I was a teacher. But this frenzied feeling still latched onto me. I decided to follow Schulte's first step as she began grappling with similar feelings, and kept a time diary for a week. After a week, when I was looking through a week's worth of data, I had the realization that I actually have a lot more free time than I realize, and the fear of not having enough was not only factually incorrect, but also taking away from actually making the most of that leisure time. I started going to watch Warriors games on weeknights at sports bars, I started going on walks, I started being more intentional about making time with people. I'm a teacher again, and these feelings are back, but I have enough leisure time. I know I have enough. 

What I'm feeling now is difficulty in making the most of that leisure time, just like I did in 2015. I feel like a lot of my free time is spent decompressing from stress, instead of actively engaging in things that will energize me and fuel my growth as a human being.

I don’t expect to ever live a life where decompression is entirely unnecessary, but I want to work towards needing that less and being more proactive in preventing the build up of cognitive overload and stress that I need to release.

But first I need to take an inventory of when I'm actually experiencing it.

Here's a template I've made, feel free to download and use for yourself!

April Third

I've sat here for over an hour
typing and erasing and typing and

erasing and sipping my coffee and typing and deleting and

listening to the Black Panther soundtrack and

wondering why older women always cut their hair short and
admiring the long white hair of the woman eating her bagel in front of me and
hoping my hair will look like hers a few decades from now and
wondering if I should get new shampoo and typing and

typing and looking at trees bristle in the wind and
paying attention to the sunset and typing and typing and deleting and

I've got to go or I'll be late to my yoga class.