I, too, am gaining strength from reading the daily blogs. This is day 2 for me and I feel strangely empowered. It is not unlike the time (30 yrs ago) that I quite smoking. I’m taking it one day at a time, and not buying that next item. Living in a very rural area, my primary source of shopping, besides the internet, has been catalogs. They are about to arrive enmasse with the mail in one hour. I’ve already contemplated my response. All catalogs will be quickly removed from the pile and expunged with the recyclables.
I know that after 21 days I will have adopted this as habit and, hopefully, these mailings will diminish.
Twenty-five years ago I lived in San Francisco with my childhood friend, we will call her Jay. We had parted ways in high school due to my father’s relocation for his job and reconnected after I had graduated from college. “Come live with me in the city,” I begged. She did. 
Tonight I was with my friend Portia who has been contemplating going on this diet for 11 months now. I told her that I have decided to extend the diet for one more year, in light of the fact that there have been so many people interested in joining the effort in the past few weeks (here we go again). When I told Portia it wasn’t too late to realize the benefits of clothing deprivation she hooped and hollered “That’s what I need, a closet colonic.” The visual made me gag. She went on to claim, “Deep within my big, fat, bloated walk-in closet there is a skinny one begging to be free.” Portia, warming to the idea, is going to “think about it,” before she commits. Let me be clear…I am not doing this for another year myself but I will moderate, facilitate, contemplate and write about life post diet. 
If I thought I was unclear as to what my style was before I embarked upon this diet I am now officially stupified! This week I went to a great clothing swap with lots of really good second hand apparel. I came home with a white t-shirt, a black sweater and a pair of blue jeans. More of the same. There were prints, velvets and fancy skirts, wrap-around-dresses and plenty of accessories and I got….a white t-shirt. I think I’m frozen now that I haven’t bought anything for a while. Clothing is simply not that interesting to me these days, especially if it takes some thinking to put an outfit together. Have I gotten lazy or just more confused. Not sure but I now have seven white t-shirts, over 11 black sweaters and more jeans than I can count. Someone, save me from myself.
O.K. I’m wrapping up the latest poll. And the results are in…more people think this diet is easy than hard. That said, it’s easier by a thin margin. 58% of you said it is relatively easy and 42% said it was hard. For me it all depends on the day. Today it’s hard, tomorrow it might be easier. I think about the pre diet era. There were days when I wasn’t feeling all that good e.g., bad hair day, ridiculous work meeting, argument with my seven year old. My immediate reaction, conscious or subconscious, was to go buy something for myself. Often times it was something completely wrong and poorly made and probably on sale (hence my closet full of crap). It was an emotional impulse.
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