Your Life as An Outfit

Hey GirlMoguls – we have a friend – Katia Raina , formerly of the Soviet Union and now an author and writer living in New Jersey.  As a girl growing up in a distant land (read more about her here), Katia believed in magic mirrors and the power of words.   She loves GirlMoguls of all ages and wanted to give you a shout out to all of you and post a question to you – read on and be sure to add a comment in the in the sections below.  We’ll pick a winner – randomly, and send them a gift card to the Justice….

Hey girl moguls! I wish there were websites like these when I was a tween! But when I was a tween (about twenty years ago), I don’t think there was even such a thing as a website.

Isn’t it funny how in those faraway ages you are learning about in social studies classes, the times used to move so-o slo-o-wly.  If you look at the earliest known civilization – the Sumerians – in the Middle East – or if you look at the Egyptians, how fast did their change happen? I actually looked it up in a book called “Timetables of History: A Horizontal Linkage of People and Events.” In 3,500 B.C., the Sumerian writing consisted of about 2,000 hieroglyphs, or characters. A thousand years later – the number of characters used went down to about 550. In Egypt, meanwhile, in the year 4,000 B.C. they played harps and flutes. A thousand years later, they moved on to lyres and double clarinets.

I am not minimizing these people’s amazing progress, just saying everything took longer. Or maybe it just feels this way from the distance of many years?

Anyway, do you go through these changes, the way the world does? Do you find that when you were a little kid, you were always pretty much the same person over the years, but now the changes accelerate? Last year, were you super-shy and unsure, and then, did you become this hurricane, involved in everything, a friend-magnet, a science maniac?

I grew up half the world across from you, in the Soviet Union, a country that’s not even there anymore, at least not as a political entity. I’ve gone through all these changes in school. From introverted, scared-of-everything-and-everyone, I went to what my best friend and I gleefully called “the queen of the class” where suddenly I found myself in the middle of every friendship or intrigue you could imagine (please note, I did keep up with my grades at the same time! J) Then, another year passed, and I found myself on the fringes of  the school’s “cool society” again; spawned by my first love, laughed at by people I thought were my “comrades” . . . only I didn’t care that much . . . by then I was preparing for my move to America!!!

Change through life is natural as the shortening and lengthening of days through the year. It’s like we try on these personas as though they were costumes. The boy-crazy me, the driven me, the athlete me, the planet’s protector me, the book-obsessed me, the girl-mogul me. J Then, when we find the accessories we like, we keep them, and move on to another costume, until we construct an outfit that is uniquely ours.

For example, here is what I’ve got so far. If my life were an outfit, I’d be wearing jeans for the adventurist, jeans because I’m neither a doctor nor a lawyer, but I’d have some frilly little lace things and patches of faux leather stuck all over them. I’d be wearing a turtleneck sweater covered with writings and newsprint. Plus, glasses, for the nerd, the college student and the aspiring teacher that I am. Finally, my leather cap, to remind myself of my Soviet past, and my writing J  And my outfit would be smeared with chocolate and dusted with flour all over. Because, well, I am a mom of two, and I happen to love making desert on Friday nights – if I have time, that is J

How about you, girl-moguls? Now, fast-forward twenty years. What do you hope to be “wearing?

Tell us in the comments below and we’ll randomly pick a winner for a $25 gift card to Justice!

And you can read more about Katia at her blog - http://katiaraina.wordpress.com/