In which I have found The Hat.

I always thought of myself as being a big hat-girl. I mean a person who has a lot of hats rather than that I, or the hats, are big. In fact I’m pretty small.

Anyway. At the start of university I remember a friend joking that maybe I didn’t have hair as he had only ever seen me with a hat on. Although that has changed a little (partly due to confidence switches. I used to hide my face under hats, now I am less confident about the hats themselves). I have five berets, a couple of trilbies, various summer hats, costume hats and a few posh vintage hats. Then along came the internet, specifically fashion blogs. I thought I was into berets, but I only have five different ones. Not enough! Lauren has even more! The bloggers I follow have hats like these: 

Roaslind, Clothes, Cameras and Coffee has a seeingly endless supply of vintage clothes, but I especially pine over her hats.

Lauren, Someone Like You, introduced me to the concept that I may need more than five berets

Annika, The Pineneedle Collective, wears this gorgeous hat in most of her posts at the moment. A constant reminder of how cute it is.

Across the internet I see people with the most beautiful of vintage hats, combined with the courage to wear them. I have some outlandish hats, including a vintage train driver hat, that I feel self-conscious and silly wearing them.  However I have found myself the Hat of Summer. In a charity shop I saw this beautifully bright har with blue fake flowers and a turquoise ribbon. It is exactly what I was looking for. I feel cute and colourful rather than odd and it matches my turquoise nail varnish perfectly. These things are important. I also like that I can wear an all grey outfit, pop on the hat, and I feel cheerful and interesting. 

 

On a very different note, I read a news article online recently about how keeping a blog makes you less attractive to employees. It was rather odd because the employer writing it had some strange ideas about how your blog reflected you. In one example her gave, someone had a blog about tinkering with computers, but was applying for a humanities job. The employer said he feared they would “lose him to the computer department”. How strange that as a an adult you would believe that a hobby in a different field implies incompetence. To get back on point, I have been very careful to not mention work on this blog. I have mentioned when I have been unemployed, because unemployment is an all-consuming constant state of depression and guilt. It is hard not to mention it.  However, I want to have a career at some point and so mentioning work at all is problematic, if I listen to this guy. It is not just mentioning what I do now that is an issue, but a future employer might fear that I would ‘gossip’ about them on here if I set a precedent. Yet, on the other hand what about things I am proud of and want to share? But more importantly, things I am learning and knowledge stemming from my work that is important? You see almost all the jobs I have had have been in the public sector (NGOs, charities) and so I want to share some of their work because I believe in it, whilst at the same time respecting work/home divisions. It is a tricky one.

So I have decided to just mention related stuff without making a big deal out of it when it comes up. But what do you other bloggers think about it? Do you stick to your chosen blogging topic or mention your work life?