This seems valuable. However, I’ve found it’s very hard to even discuss the possibility of a concept being relevant without referring to it in a way that reifies it. As a result, naming it “smuggling” seems to me to carry a valence of underhandedness and intentionality that’s more accusatory than is ideal. (a “stowaway frame” might similarly capture that it’s coming along for the ride whether you meant to or not?)
mayaland
Karma: 2
It doesn’t have to be cooking, basically any hobby works like this, as long as you get returns to effort. It might be art, or weightlifting, or whatever. You just need to keep reminding your brain that effort has a purpose.
When I was a young precocious type, nothing I did in traditional academic areas seemed to reflect a return on effort, because I was one of those breeze-through-it-upside-down types working at too low of a difficulty level. Later in life, I did need to pursue academics in ways that required a lot of effort. I have always believed that this was only possible for me because as a child I was also studying classical piano, where I learned how it felt for grinding away to lead to clear improvement.
At the same time, it’s definitely been the case at various times in my life that I have had an inappropriately internal locus of control. Believing that one’s own agency can accomplish things that it can’t can be pernicious too – at least for individual mental health.
This was the most interesting aside to me. I can’t say whether it’s totally what’s going on here, but I’ve noticed a real reticence in clothing advice generally to acknowledge that fashion changes preclude optimizing your wardrobe for timelessness, and that nothing stays neutral over time. I observe a lot of folks internalizing fashion dictates of one period in time as what’s “flattering”: other women my age commonly saying things like “wide leg jeans just don’t look good on my body” when younger women (critically, with the same body types) expect and prefer the look of the wider leg.
The principles here are laid out in a totally trend-agnostic way, which is super valuable to folks who haven’t thought about this much—but the examples are most notably very on-trend with menswear right now. A principle might be “to most successfully communicate to others with your clothing (whatever your goals), you will need to learn some of the language that fashion is using at this moment in time.”