u/Hot_Chipmunk6610

Today is exactly one year. He moved his last box on a monday morning in may 2025. I remember it was warm.

This morning I was getting ready and grabbed a thin gold necklace off the dish without looking. Got to the coffee shop, sat down, looked at my reflection in the window and realized which one it was. It was the necklace my friend M gave me three months after the divorce, when she drove down from seattle and made me eat dinner. It was not one of the necklaces from before.

I have been wearing it on rotation with two others for months and I had not registered that all three of the necklaces I reach for are post-divorce ones. The drawer still has the ones from before. They sit there. My hand just doesn't go to them anymore.

Not really sure what I'm posting for. (Maybe just to mark the day, maybe to say it out loud somewhere.) But noticing that one year in, my body has been quietly redecorating my closet for me and I only just caught it.

Lately I’ve noticed my brain feels crowded even on days where I’m not doing physically difficult work. It’s more like there are too many small things constantly sitting in the background. Notifications, unfinished tasks, random tabs open, checking my phone without thinking, switching between things too often.

By evening I feel mentally tired without really knowing where all the energy went.

I’ve been trying a few small changes recently and some of them helped more than I expected. One simple thing was stopping myself from instantly reacting to every notification or message the second it appears. Another was trying to keep fewer things open while working because I realized even visual clutter affects me more than I thought.

Still figuring it out honestly because some days I fall straight back into the same habits.

Would honestly love to hear small things that worked for other people because I feel like a lot of us are more mentally overloaded than we realize.

When I first got into consulting, I assumed the hardest part would be the hours. And yeah, some weeks are brutal, but honestly I think what gets to me more now is feeling like my brain never actually shuts off anymore.

Even after work I catch myself staying in this weird half-working state. I’ll open my phone to relax for a few minutes and somehow end up checking emails again, scrolling LinkedIn, jumping between random apps, reading about work stuff without meaning to. It doesn’t even feel intentional half the time.

The strange thing is I can technically be “done” for the day and still feel mentally busy. Like my attention never fully settles anywhere.

I noticed it started affecting smaller things too. Watching a movie without checking my phone. Reading something longer than a few pages. Even conversations sometimes. My brain got too used to constant switching between things all day and now quiet downtime almost feels uncomfortable at first.

I used to think I was just tired from work itself, but I’m starting to think the bigger problem is that there’s never a clean break mentally. There’s always another notification, another message, another quick check that keeps the day feeling open.

Lately I’ve been trying to create a little more separation after work instead of automatically reaching for my phone every few minutes. Some days I’m better at it than others honestly.

Other people in consulting feel this too or if I’m just overthinking it.

32f. 14 months of leave. Back for three weeks now. The logistics are handled childcare, schedule, pump situation sorted. None of that prepared me for the closet.

The clothes fit differently. Not just size-wise the silhouettes are off in a way I can't fully name. The things I used to feel good in feel like they belong to a version of me who had a different relationship with her body, a different reason to get dressed, a different kind of morning.

I've been rotating two dresses on repeat and avoiding the rest of the wardrobe by not looking directly at it. I keep telling myself I'll sort it when life is calmer. Life is not going to be calmer.

How do you build a work wardrobe back up when you have approximately no time, limited budget, and a completely different body and self than the one who packed for leave?

5'2" here. Years of trial and error – bottoms finally solved. Cropped flares, ankle-length wide-legs with a pointed heel, midi skirts with a fitted top. Bottom half: functional.

Tops. Every standard blouse sleeve hits somewhere wrong on my arm. V-necks that are designed to be subtle show half my chest. Anything slightly boxy on a taller person looks like a tent on me. Petite tops at my price range seem designed for someone with very narrow shoulders who also has very small proportions in every direction simultaneously.

Four years. Four years of looking for a non-oversized button-down that doesn't hit at least two wrong notes. The shoulders are off, or there's gaping across the bust or the proportions are just bewildering.

Is there a top category I've missed entirely, or do the rest of you just live in knitwear and stretch fabrics and call it solved?

I used to think something was off with me because I couldn’t stick to anything I planned. I’d make a list, feel motivated for a bit, and then somehow end up jumping between small distractions for half the day. Nothing huge, just constant switching.

It didn’t feel serious in the moment. Just checking something, opening an app, grabbing a snack, refreshing something again. But by the time I actually tried to sit down and do something properly, my head already felt scattered.

After a while I stopped thinking of it as a discipline issue and started noticing how much “quick reward” stuff I was packing into my day without realizing.

Once I saw that pattern, I didn’t try to overhaul everything. I just changed a few small things.

1. Delayed the first distraction of the day
2. I didn’t make it strict, just tried to do one normal task before touching my phone. Something small like getting ready or finishing one thing. It changed how the rest of the morning felt.
3. Made distractions slightly harder to reach
4. Didn’t block anything completely. Just moved apps around, kept my phone a bit away, added small friction. That tiny pause was enough to notice what I was about to do.
5. Started paying attention to slower wins
6. Instead of jumping between quick hits, I tried to stay with one thing a bit longer. Finishing something small, reading a few pages, completing a task. It didn’t feel exciting at first, but it felt better after.

None of this fixed everything. I still slip back some days.

But things don’t feel as chaotic as before. Starting doesn’t feel as heavy, and I’m not constantly switching between things without realizing it.

 If anyone else has noticed something similar or found their own way out of that loop.

Edit (update): Thanks for all the responses in comments. One person mentioned the friction trick - not making anything too easy, taking an extra step for it works stupidly well. Another person mentioned scheduling dopamine on purpose with small Google Calendar blocks instead of fighting it. But the biggest shift came from adding Jolt screen time and set GPS blocking at my desk… bro the moment I sit down, Instagram is just DEAD. No opening, no “just checking.” Felt illegal at first but I actually got work done without fighting myself for once. 

Was married for 14 years. Finalized the divorce six months ago. My friends keep telling me I need to “get back out there,” and honestly, I think I’m ready.

Made profiles on Hinge and Bumble, and then stood in front of my closet for 20 minutes, realizing everything I own falls into two categories: “school pickup mom” and “trying to look 28 again.”

I genuinely don’t know what to wear on a first date at 45. Everything in stores feels like it’s designed for someone a decade younger or someone who’s given up entirely. I want to look like myself, but a version of myself that didn’t spend the last 14 years dressing for soccer games and couple dinners where nobody cared.

How are other women navigating this? I don’t want a full makeover. I just want to feel like ME again, but the version that’s actually excited about life.

I'm 5'1" and I have spent two and a half decades thinking my bra straps slipped because my shoulders are sloped, or because I bought wrong, or because my posture is bad, or because I just wear cheap bras (I don't, I've spent the money). Tucking the straps back up has been an unconscious reflex for so long that I do it without noticing.

Last weekend I bought a petite blouse from a brand I trust and the shoulder seam landed maybe an inch and a quarter past where my actual shoulder ends. The seam was hanging off me. And I had this moment where I went, wait, the seam is in the wrong place, and then I went, OH. The seam has been in the wrong place for 22 years.

Petite grading apparently shortens the torso and the sleeve and the inseam but does NOT narrow the shoulder. So a petite top has a shoulder seam designed for a 5'7" woman's shoulder width, just on a shorter torso. That's also why the bra straps slip, the bra is sitting under a top that's wider than my actual shoulder line, so the straps drift outward.

I am genuinely upset about this. Twenty-two years. I have been adjusting around a problem that is a manufacturing decision and not a fact about my body. It also explains a bunch of other things, the slightly weird shoulder pad placement on every blazer I own, the sleeves that always look slightly too dropped, the way every t-shirt collar sits a little wider than I want.

I think I'm going to go on a measurement spree this week and find which brands actually grade the shoulder for petite (Banana Republic petite seems to, J.Crew petite seems to, almost no one else does as far as I can tell). But asking the sub:

1. Has anyone else had this realization and what did you change?

2. Are there brands you've found that ACTUALLY grade petite shoulder width, not just length?

3. Is there an alteration name for "narrow the shoulder seam by 1 inch on each side" that I can ask my tailor for without sounding like I'm making it up...

I did our taxes last week and pulled the year's spreadsheet to track clothing against alterations because I'd had a sneaking suspicion. Reader, the alterations line was $1,840. The clothing line was $1,610. I spent more tailoring clothes to fit me than I spent on the clothes themselves.

I'm 5'1". I have a tailor I love (small woman in our neighbor hood, has been doing my hems for like 6 years). She is not overcharging me. I am just bringing her too many things. Pants get a hem AND a taper at the calf, blouses get a shoulder shaved, dresses get the bodice taken in, occasionally the entire shoulder seam moved.

I justified this for years by telling myself it's the only way to look polished as a petite woman, this is the cost of doing business at 5'1. And it kind of is. But also $1,840 is a real number and when I actually looked at it the math was insane.

I think the issue is that I keep buying things that are mostly right and then making them right with a tailor, when what I should be doing is buying fewer things that are actually right out of the box. The probelm is I don't know which brands and which silhouettes those even are anymore because I've been muscle-memory-buying the same way for a decade.

Asking the petite community: how do you keep your tailoring spend down? Not asking how to find a cheaper tailor, asking how to buy in a way that requires less of one. Pretty sure the answer is going to involve actually trying things on at home and being honest about what needs three alterations vs one, but I'm open to method suggestions.

For long time I thought I just had a focus problem. I’d sit down to work and within a few minutes I’d drift. Check something small, open a tab, pick up my phone for no real reason. Then suddenly 20 minutes are gone and I haven’t even properly started.

So I kept trying to fix the work part. Better to-do lists, timers, etc... It helped for a bit, but I’d always end up back in the same loop.

After a while I noticed something that felt kind of obvious in hindsight. Most of my sessions were already decided before I even began.

I used to just sit down and jump straight into work. Phone next to me, notifications on, random tabs open. No clear starting point, just hoping I’d stay focused.

Now I do things a bit differently.

Before I start, I take a few minutes to clean it up. Close whatever I don’t need, open only the one thing I’m supposed to work on, and keep my phone a little out of reach. Sometimes I just sit for a minute before starting instead of jumping in immediately.

It’s nothing fancy, but it changed more than anything else I tried.

I still get distracted, but I don’t lose that first hour like before. And once that first stretch goes well, the rest usually follows.

Anyone else has something small they do before starting that actually helps?

Update: Thankyou for all the replies and advices. One thing a bunch of people said that actually helped was to stop aiming for a full life reset and just do one small win early in the day. I also tried blocking real time slots on Google Calendar instead of guessing my day**.** I started using Jolt screen time and tried opening TikTok in the middle of work and the screen just STOPS me with a “You sure about this?” message. I swear I sat there for like 5 seconds having a mini life review about why I even Picked up my phone. I immediately Put it DOWN.

A colleague said this to me in the kitchen at work last week as a compliment. I said thank you. Then I walked back to my desk and tried to picture what I wore to work on any specific day in the last year and I came up with nothing. Not one outfit. Not last Wednesday, not the Monday before vacation, not the day I presented to the board. Zero.

I own 38 pieces of clothing that I actively wear. I know this because I did a count over the weekend. 9 tops, 6 sweaters, 5 pairs of pants, 4 dresses, 3 skirts, 11 other (outerwear, etc). Every morning I put on some combination of these 38 pieces and I cannot remember any of it five hours later.

I think I have solved the getting-dressed problem so completely that I have deleted it from my own memory. Which, if the goal of a capsule was ease, I should be celebrating. But I'm not. I'm bothered. Because I can remember every outfit I wore for the first six months I put this capsule together, I was hyper-aware of what I had on, and now there is nothing. My closet has become maintenance.

Is there a term for this? For the point where a capsule has succeeded so much that you stop experiencing the clothes? And more importantly, do I fight it or is that actually the win state?