I. Am. An. Engineer.
I never thought I’d be saying those words on a blog I’ve restricted solely to fashion, but I feel like it’s time to be honest, not only with you but with myself. For the longest time, I didn’t really want to be an engineer. Yes I majored in it, yes I work in the field, but I didn’t love the whole tech sort of vibe and the stereotype that often came with it. I felt like being in a technical field meant that I had to hide my creative, feminine side, and being a fashion creator here meant that I had to suppress the un-sparkly half of my brain. I’ve never let the two worlds collide.
All I keep hearing about on social platforms is “be authentic” and “be real” which honestly feels a bit foreign to me given that I never really let people in at all, but I feel like it’s time to let the two sides mingle, to be the person I’ve always been. I can’t be me without being creative, but I also can’t be me without expressing my technical side. I’ve spent so much time trying to figure out what my “niche” is, what makes me “different” as a blogger/fashionista, but I’ve realized that being me is a niche itself. I started this blog with the intent of expressing pent-up creativity, but now it’s time to express myself. Myself as a whole, myself without walls. It’s all here. I’m no longer afraid to let it show.
You might be wondering how or why someone with such a strong love of fashion aesthetics chose to do something with their life that really doesn’t have anything to do with that. Well, it’s a long, complicated story that even I myself don’t have worked out yet. But, for now I’ll just say this: 1. Nobody (and I mean nobody) can honestly say with any certainty at 19 years old that what they are doing is what they are going to be doing for the rest of their working life. 2. Big life decisions made after life-altering breakups (especially ones motivated by a sudden desire to emancipate yourself from traditional gender roles and restrictions) don’t always turn out to be the best (or most sane) choices in the long run. In the end, I listened to my head telling me to choose a stable career with financial promise over my heart whispering “but you have to be happy too“.
In retrospect, it hasn’t all been bad. Being an engineer allowed me to explore new realms of possibilities when it comes to my hobbies. Granted, I did strictly separate the concepts of “fashionable” and “at work” to different proverbial planets. But, it’s all been part of my process. I mean, I really did, and still do, a lot of self-discovery in terms of who I am and where I fit.
Despite all of this soul-searching and self-examination, I only know one thing for certain: I know who I have been, I know who I am in this moment, and I have absolutely no idea who I will be in the next 5 years or even 5 minutes. That unknown used to bother me a lot (and some days it still does), but I think that’s what being young or even being a human is about: evolving and devolving at a rapid pace to suit the changes of your own personal world. I had a professor in college say once, “you will never know completely who you are until you are done being you”. A little philosophy to bring things into perspective and meditate on, and I think in a lot of ways, he’s right. Who you are is such a fluid concept, one that changes even by mere observation (to speak in terms of my science-y, physics loving side, the Observer Effect). Maybe I won’t know truly who I am until I’m done being me, and I am definitely not done yet! Until then, I am an unknown: a shapeshifter, an engineer, a fashionista, a mashup of things. I am me.
Xx Tabi
