At one point I thought I might have a shopping addiction.

The only issue was that financially everything was mostly fine. My savings could have been better , but nothing was going unpaid.

Still my mind was preoccupied with aesthetics, clothing as language, and shopping.

I briefly considered therapy.

The problem was I wasn’t exactly sure how to explain the issue.

Something like: “My clothes seem to be sending me cultural signals. I spend most of my time interpreting them. Other people’s clothes send me messages as well. I spend many hours interpreting those too.”

I felt like this conversation would not go well.

Looking back I see what made things more confusing was that every “solution” was just another aesthetic.

When the constant signaling started to feel exhausting, I moved toward subdued clothing. But even that quickly turned into its own aesthetic rabbit hole: normcore, minimalism, quiet luxury.

The clothes got quieter, not the thinking.

I was still analyzing everything.

It wasn’t until my last burnout phase that I did something different.

I completely stopped consuming style content altogether.

That’s when it finally clicked that the problem wasn’t my wardrobe.

It was the framework I was using to think about it.