Day 24 (poorly), to 30....a horrideous week

Today's update is LATE. I have had a most alarmingly busy week, I spent the last few days in a tornado of meetings, brainstorms and creative debates. This has left me with no time to blog and no will to stay awake for any more hours than absolutely necessary. Here is a whistlestop tour of the week.

Saturday 24th started miserably with a most unfair hangover, resulting in a morbid fear that my head would fall off if I moved. Hence no photo, I did not emerge from my bedroom until 5pm at which point I setttled myself on the sofa in a horrifically ugly jumper and endeavoured not to cry in self pity.

Sunday was much improved and I caught up with friends in the pub in a pair of loved yet underused abercrombie maura shorts, jackwills top and my total fave piece of Kate Moss for Topshop. Chats centred around the wonderful backstreet shops of Brighton where Lucy my lovely friend has been seconded. She has discovered a wondrous shop in which you can choose your fabric and have a dress made for the price of the highstreet. Imagine if you will my abject sadness at such a wonderful, tantalising concept, so out of reach for those on HangerStrike. Sob. Again I found myself pondering why it is that immediately I find out about places such as these I want something from them, entirely reardless of whether or not I need an item. This unbalanced interplay between need and want is something I feel will rear it's ugly little head time and time again over the course of the year.

Monday saw me coming to terms with the fact that my blog followers continue to believe that buying presents for my friends should follow the rules of my blog. As a devoted blogger I have decided to take this on board and will now follow the rules of HangerStrike not only for myself but also for my friends. So if you are reading this, you are getting no wardrobe colateral from me this year (sorry).

In response to this new hurdle I was forced to consider what I would buy for Laura, our nautically obsessed, prawn sized birthday girl. Pondering led me to the amazing and fabulously kitsch Keep Calm Gallery for a limited edition screen print.

This got me thinking (as well as buying one for myself). With our constant focus on clothing and our externally presented image that we forget to embrace the full world of art and design. So obsessed are we with the clothing portion of the artistic pie, we have entirely neglected the rest of the artistic world. I feel like this mere month of retail detox has reopened my eyes to the world of art.  How extraordinarily exciting

Tuesday is the day the week really began for me. From this point I fear I had no thought except for the incredible length of my to do list. I failed even to tweet! I know this is shocking in 2010, yet it is the honest truth.

As the week progressed I found myself at work at 10pm on Wednesday (Day 28) with not a soul to take my daily snap! In abject determination I worked out all on my own how to turn the flash off my camera and used a full length mirror to take my photo in the loo. Yes, this is now the definition of commitment. A new sphere of dedication to the HangerStrike cause.

The week gets increasingly scrufftastic as I struggle through. Busy is such an understatement and my alignment with current style slips further and further down the priority list. It's an absolute boon that I am not famous as I cannot fathom the distress I would find myself in if I were papped in such a state of general disarray! Praise the lord for this and for the country location of our workplace.

Friday is the final straw, such disgraceful attire would have placed me in style Siberia for decades. I refused to have identifiable photographic evidence of me in this state and took an opportunity to have a five minute snooze on the office sofa.

So, a pile of photos of the week so far and a new topic to ponder. That of the relationship between stress levels and the effort one puts into individual appearence. As I got increasingly tired I found my interest in my clothing immeasurably reduced. A fact that seems at odds with earlier observations that stress or a lack of control drives an increased desire to buy new stuff. As it stands I am not sure I understand why on earth that this should be. In fact as I got more and more scruffy I still felt the undeniable urge to boost my waning mood with a pretty online purchase. Is it that as life pressures eat the time normally dedicated to personal appearence that we subconsciously counterbalance a lack of time with an increased spend? Do we try to mitigate the negative effects of a lack of sleep and a distinctly pallid appearence with a little bit of credit card bashing? Another thing to ponder as the weekend draws to a close.......