One of the toughest things to do in life is to stop trying to be the person you were and become the person you are. I am struggling with this 40 thing like you wouldn’t believe. I’m in compete denial about how old I am and I don’t really have a good point of reference for other people my age without children. I’m trying not to be glum and grim and fatalistic and make myself 60 already and sit around wondering what kind of crippling disease I’ll invariably succumb to, but the bloody painkillers aren’t helping.
This is not as grim as that setup makes it sound. But it is disconcerting nonetheless. Over the last couple of weeks ,I’ve been conducting a major wardrobe audit, occasioned largely by the wife’s discovery of those thin fuzzy hangers that let you fit more in the closet. It’s forced not only a wardrobe appraisal but a reassessment of the pile of shoes covering the floor.
(God, this feels strange to write. Nevertheless, onward.)
And what I learned, most unsettlingly, is that the leather jackets and the Dr Martens boots just aren’t who I am anymore.
Some of this makes perfect sense. My black ForLife Docs and my Solovairs are ill-fitting in opposite directions, the riot reds aren’t the sort of thing you can wear around, and the steel-toes, while comfortable as hell, are impractical as daily wear when I’m not driving or working light industrial. And I don’t want to wear out the date-night Docs.
But more unsettling is the jacket situation. The black leather car coat has been in storage more or less since moving to California, and the brown suede trucker jacket has always felt wrong somehow despite my best efforts to force it to work – not least because it’s just a bit too heavy for all but the coldest days here. But there’s the Indy jacket – the brown leather jacket that was the trademark of my wardrobe in DC, the thing my wife thinks of from our early days. It was iconic. And looking at myself in the mirror now, it looks wrong somehow. Like a guy coming back to his high school reunion in his letterman jacket.
Shoes and outerwear have always been critical to my sense of wardrobe. Hat too – and I didn’t do that much with hats in DC or here until the last year or so, but now that black Vanderbilt baseball fitted is my everyday hat, and I do mean every day. But now, my barnwood Topsiders feel more like me. Or my Palladium ultralites (which I just replaced) or my waterproof Palladiums in moss gray leather for winter. Maybe those boat shoes are appealing because I can skip the socks, like in the DC summer days. Or maybe they just look sufficiently mature somehow.
So the jackets then. The Uniqlo stuff is working out nicely. The peacoat is at long last the very thing I want for cold weather (and looks absolutely perfect). In the meantime, I’m looking at what’s in between, debating the work-jacket look (for almost two years now) and vacillating between a ScottEVest Standard (which would hold the iPad) and a Filson-Levi’s trucker jacket (which would lasts a lifetime and be more water-resistant).
I guess this is all part and parcel of accepting that I am not the person I was eight years ago, when I first grasped I wasn’t the person I used to be. And despite everything, I can’t really get away with looking like a grad student anymore. Fewer polos, more button-ups, casual sportcoats instead of shells and fleece and leathers.
Whoever it turns out I am, I should look the part. It’ll cost money, but that’s the price of not looking like a grad student at 40.