untitled 01 | 09.29.2025

by wrymood

It’s 9:30pm on a Sunday. I haven’t written with the intent to publish in almost two weeks.

Blame the travel, the lazy haze that showers the LA suburbs, the gentleness of home that reverts me back into a child.

My fingers feel stiff as I type, resisting what comes too easily to my mind, afraid to birth structure to the thoughts that live on the solitary side of these glasses.

I hold onto an interesting matrix of emotions. Usually, I would overanalyze them and try to diagnosis myself. But rather than bringing myself back center too soon, this time I want to try leaning into these sensations—some of them objectively negative—to passively shape how I navigate my present experience. Because there is overarching peace and stability in how I feel, which isn’t something I would have expected given these circumstances. How should one react when things aren’t going better or worse than expected? When things are simply, just, going? There is nothing to fix, nothing to rejoice or capitalize on. The empty promise of tomorrow carries.

A six-months ago version of myself lives on in my journals. He is preserved by objective words and contextualized by the pressure I held my pen, legibility of writing, length and frequency of entries. I read back on these like sacred text, amazed at the equal parts prescience and naivety that can exist within the same ideas. Older is not always wiser.

I’m feeling a bit warmed up now. Where to start, where to start?

Product development has been moving forward, driven largely by Ryan. We’re just about ready to send in our tech pack for version 2 of our workwear jacket, which means I’ll hopefully have updated samples in hand by mid-October. The jacket itself has undergone some major design changes and we are testing out a new manufacturer. Now we just pray that the realized product looks as good as our mockups. We’ve also been working on a tech pack for version 1 of some pants. These are likely to be a pair of straight fit, darted and/or pleated twill.

same mockup, white vs. black background

On the design side of the house, I’ve been working closely with a graphic designer to develop our brand identity these past few weeks. We’re trying to capture a youthful yet credible essence with branding. The catchphrase ringing through my head these days is Cityboy Americana, which holds a lot of historical and aspirational meaning to me, but maybe not much to others. At least, not yet.

If all goes well with branding, we will have a set of assets to use across social media and products by the end of October as well. In the meantime, I’ve been doing my own studying. I’m taking an online course on Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator, reviewing a Graphic Design book I got a few months ago, and have watched some relevant episodes of Abstract: The Art of Design.

I’m trying my best to execute. But there’s been a lot more waiting these past few weeks than I’ve been used to. How I will get through the anticipation of October is the real question. Hopefully the Dodgers stay alive long enough to keep me distracted.

I have far more interesting ideas I want to write about, but unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find the time to think through them.

Some things I want to write about ASAP include:

• The case of staying at your job

• The importance of stacking

• Everything I’ve come to know about fashion

• How we move forward from the workwear trend

• A quote from Rilke that I love

• My biggest gripe about New York

They each deserve significant attention and refinement, unlike this essay.

You and me both will just have to settle with this for now.

- R.Y.