Taking Flight

I've been having a lot of Ballon Rouge moments lately, here at college, being swept up into something great. It's not support or a push upwards from the bottom, but rather a big tug from above, a call to my own special adventure. This swirling optimistic energy just comes barreling through and lifts me along. Whether it's the muted excitement of other teenagers at Fashion Week dreaming of the collections to come and trying not to look starstruck, or the organized chaos of class registration and each class's promise of fascinatingly obscure knowledge, the balloons have descended, and all I can do is hold on tight and begin to fly.

Brinks

So here I am, toeing the line between summer and fall, between childhood and adulthood, in fidgety and nervous anticipation of my first week of college. My feelings are mixed. I will never have another childhood, and this makes me all the more nostalgic and despondent - I never lived my child star dream, and as many Fourth of Julys and and Halloweens and Valentine's Days as I might have left, I only had one of each for every year of my life: my fourth year, my eighth year, my seventeenth year. . . And yet I have a stretch of years before me filled with unwritten memories and unachieved achievements. One day the world will know who I am, and one day, after my story is finished, I will finally sit down and tell it all.

Thinking Out Loud

I just wanted to thank you all – readers and followers alike – for your love. I know my blog isn't the most popular fashion blog out there by any means, and it wouldn't be right if it were! I'm happy to have my blog be our little secret. Since À la Mode differs from other blogs in a number of respects - it's not a lookbook, for one; it's not focused on the latest fashion gossip, for two - I am grateful that you all appreciate it for what it is: an inspirational montage filled with nostalgia for childhood, for eras we missed, for magical places that don't really exist.

I apologize for my lack of posts lately. Summer - hazy beach swimming, late-night stargazing, and drippy-ice cream-licking - the closest to a world of magic I have been in real life - has drawn me away from my online world of pretend. Be sure that I will resume my regular posting in the near future, with reasonably sporadic posting for now. Rest assured that I do not plan to abandon something this special to me.