That photo from the signing is ADORABLE.

ETA: Do you guys market the curlybat table runners? Because WANT.

I bought TWO copies of GCS today! I am giving one to my co-worker whose daughter is quote, "Going Goth". YAY BOOK!!

I've only had time to skim the intro so far, and the book is making me wish I had more of a personality in high school. I was never confident enough in what I liked to develop a coherent look, and the result is as an adult I present myself far more generically than I'd really like to. (And with a mortgage and a toddler, I have too much debt to completely redo my wardrobe anyway. Woe is me!)

I have decided I'm going back to the blue hair very soon though. I'm tired of this natural look.

I was never confident enough in what I liked to develop a coherent look, and the result is as an adult I present myself far more generically than I'd really like to.

Jessica and I are the same in this regard. It's only been recently - like since having Emeline - that I've started to go a little more funky in my look and a little less homogenous.

I was a punk in high school but I had a big crush on a... well we didn't call them goths back then, she was a 'doom & gloom' kid.

I was also an amorphous lump in high school. It wasn't until college, when I went to a totally different town where no one knew me that I had the confidence to become someone new.

I am giving one to my co-worker whose daughter is quote, "Going Goth"

That's a great idea! I shall purchase one for my cow-orker's daughter (this is the one where the dad found me at work and said "I bet you listen to Evanescence. Do you think it's OK for a teenage girl to listen to?").

I didn't know I was goth, but I was, as much as I could manage. I would love to dress in a combo of 1940s and goth now, but I am actually a Lazy!Goth.

I'm a total late bloomer. It's only been in my thirties that I've had the confidence to unapologetically be who I am-- whether it's a slob on writing days or to the nines when the occasion warrants, because, as Jilli says in her video, it makes me happy.

I seem to be sliding into yoga-hippie, with just enough leather to keep 8-year-olds from beating me up for my lunch money. But I'm still looking forward to my copy of GCS arriving. (Why did I take the free, but slow, delivery option? Why?)

My high school senior year a switch flipped, and I stopped trying to make everybody else like me and decided to like myself. My look changed from inoffensive pastels, white Peter Pan collars and jumpers, hair kept shortish and "done", pink lipstick and a pat of powder to black, miniskirts, pointy boots, wide eyeliner, and long straight hair. Tiny tasteful jewelry was replaced with statement pieces, and the soft-spoken, easily-cowed personality grew a backbone.

I maintained my "look"--with updates and mods--through college and a brief career as an army officer's wife, *not* popular with the other wives or superior officers, as you might imagine. My downfall was two babies in less than a year. Getting myself showered, shampooed and decently covered with any regularity was an achievement, and by the time they were both in school, I'd got out of the habit of having a "look." Corporate conformity was necessary for employment, though I did lapse into less conforming outfits from time to time. I still have not reinstated a "look". But I wear what I like, what I feel comfortable in, and figure my personality is colorful enough to define me. In another life, perhaps I'd have been sartorially stronger.