No. 12 or Lessons on Bravery

What do you do when you are afraid of what a day might bring? You make the day afraid of you. That's right -- I put on my bravest skirt and my bravest face and I showed the day who was boss. Turns out this philosophy, that I just made up today, works.
Sometimes people ask me about having confidence or being brave enough to wear bold pieces and outfits. I never quite know what to say, as I don't consider myself an extremely brave person (although I do have my ears pierced and I am a fan of roller coasters). If I'm wearing too much jewelry, an unconventional outfit or if I think that my skirt is just a tad too short, I shy away from places where I know people will stare at me or look at me funny. It's just how I am by nature. Funny since I have a blog where I chronicle my outfits by the week and I throw them out there for all the world to see, right? Somewhere in between my nature and my practice, I've found bravery. And I think it happened when I bought this skirt.
Let's be clear here -- I get a lot of looks when I wear this skirt. Most of the time I can slink by and no one pays me any attention, but not with this skirt. It takes A LOT of courage to put this skirt on and not throw a jacket over it, or just go home for lunch and stay hidden behind my desk all day. It's much easier to have bravery on my blog than to have it in real life. But today I put it on and I wore it. I wore it as I went to lunch with my husband, I wore it to the court to take care of a ticket, I wore it to meetings at work and didn't feel like a shamed Peg Bundy. I wore that skirt and didn't let the skirt wear me.
Today I could have rolled out of bed and put on my grey pants and a white shirt to blend in with the office crowd, because truth be told that's what I felt like doing. But instead I put on a riduculous animal print skirt and ended up feeling confident and brave. If you fake bravery long enough, you will become brave and apparently...

....ferocious.