Lately, I’ve been thinking about how badly people seem to want to fit themselves into a box. And I don’t just mean professionally, although that’s definitely part of it. I mean everything. The way we dress, decorate our homes, spend our free time, build our careers, get educated, date, travel, even the hobbies we pick up. There seems to be a very specific version of what a successful, stylish, interesting or well-adjusted person is supposed to look like, and we’ve gotten really comfortable trying to become that person.

Look around and you start seeing it everywhere. Homes that look like slightly different versions of the same Pinterest board. The same neutral interiors, the same sterile furniture, the same muted color palettes. Personal style that follows whatever aesthetic is currently having a moment on TikTok or Instagram. Hobbies that somehow need to fit into a lifestyle. Careers that need to be explained in one sentence. Even our personalities seem to come with categories now.

And I know I sound like I’m about to complain about the internet for three pages, but I’m really not. I love the internet, and grew up on Tumblr before it sold out. I love seeing what people are making, wearing and creating. I’m a creative director. Inspiration is literally part of how my brain works.

But there’s a difference between being inspired by something and letting it do all of your thinking for you.

Somehow, inspiration stopped being something we played with and started becoming a set of instructions. Instead of seeing something and thinking, “I love that. How would I make it mine?” we see it and think, “Okay, got it. This is what my version is supposed to look like.” And then we copy it, post it, and move on to the next aesthetic before we’ve even figured out whether we actually liked it in the first place.

And that’s where I think we’ve gotten ourselves into trouble.

Maybe I’m nostalgic, but I think the 90s and even the early 2000s had a little more personality. People followed trends then, too. Obviously. We weren’t all wandering around inventing our own clothes from scratch. But people seemed more willing to interpret things. Two people could be wearing essentially the same trend and somehow look completely different because of how they styled it, what they mixed it with or simply who they were.

There was more room to make things your own.

Now, we can skip that entire step. We can buy the exact outfit, recreate the exact room and follow the exact aesthetic. We have so much access to inspiration that we don’t always give ourselves enough time to develop an opinion of our own.

And I don’t think people have suddenly become less interesting.

I think we’ve just become more afraid of looking like ourselves.

Maybe We’re Just Afraid to Be Ourselves

There’s a lot of safety in conformity. If everyone else is doing it, you don’t have to wonder if you’re doing it wrong. If everyone has the same degree, you don’t have to explain yours. If everyone is wearing the same thing, you don’t have to worry about standing out. If everyone’s career follows a familiar path, yours doesn’t feel as risky.
Approval is comfortable.

And I get it. We all want to feel accepted. We all want to feel like we’re making the right choices. There’s something reassuring about looking around and seeing other people doing the same thing.

But I think we’ve gotten a little too comfortable making choices based on what will be easiest for other people to understand.

I see it in my own personal style because I’ve never really been a one-aesthetic person. When I’m working in a more corporate environment, even a creative one, I’m perfectly happy keeping things simple. I’ve got my neutral black dresses from Nordstrom, things from brands like Doên, and pieces that are me, yet polished enough to work professionally.

But outside of that, I’ve got my boho side, my casual grunge side and plenty of other things mixed in. My tattoos are the same way. I have neo-traditional, traditional, and black-and-gray work. They don’t all belong to one perfectly cohesive visual style, and I actually like that they don’t.

I didn’t get tattoos thinking, “Okay, what’s my tattoo aesthetic going to be for the next 90 years?”

I saw things I liked, and I got them.

That’s it.

I think we could use a little more of that attitude in general.

Not everything you like has to coordinate. Your wardrobe doesn’t need to communicate one consistent aesthetic. Your home doesn’t need to look like it came from one collection. Your hobbies don’t have to make sense with your career. You can like something for five years and then decide you’re over it. You can change your mind without needing to announce that you’ve entered a new “era.”

You’re allowed to be inconsistent.

You’re allowed to be a little all over the place.

Honestly, I think that’s part of what makes someone interesting.

And this is where I see the same thing happening professionally, especially in design.

Design is my area of expertise and something I genuinely love, but even there I’ve noticed this increasing pressure to put people into very specific categories. Can you design? Sure, I can. But then it becomes: What kind of designer are you? What style do you specialize in? What industry are you in? What kind of brands have you worked with?

And I understand that companies want people with relevant experience. Of course they do. But we’ve somehow taken specialization so far that having range can start looking like a flaw.

If I’ve designed for e-commerce, CPG, tech and other industries, shouldn’t that tell you I can adapt? That I understand different audiences and business problems? That I know how to shift my approach depending on the brand instead of forcing every project into the same visual box?

Since when did versatility become evidence that you don’t know what you’re doing?

I don’t need every brand to look like me. I need to understand what makes that brand itself.

That’s the job.

And this is one of the reasons I think back to when I started working on the creative side of advertising. One of the things that inspired me most was the people. They were professional, but they still had personality. People had fun hair, tattoos, interesting clothes and personal style with some edge. They looked like themselves.

There was a sense that being creative wasn’t just something you did when you sat down at your computer. It was part of the culture.

I miss that.

Even creative environments can feel much more rigid now. Everything is polished. Everything is tasteful. Everything is safe. And there’s something a little ironic about working in an industry built around creativity while watching everything slowly become more bland and predictable.

Maybe that’s what bothers me about the sad beige takeover. It’s not the beige itself. Beige is innocent. It’s what it represents when everything has to be tasteful, cohesive, polished and broadly appealing.

Nobody wants to make the choice that might make someone pause and think, “I don’t know if I like that.”

But that’s kind of the point of having taste.

You’re supposed to like some things and dislike other things.

You’re supposed to have an opinion!

And your opinion doesn’t have to survive a focus group.

Your Life Doesn’t Actually Have to Make Sense to Everyone Else

We’ve become overly concerned with making our lives coherent. Your education should lead to your career. Your career should lead to your next career. Your home should have one recognizable style. Your wardrobe should fit one aesthetic. Your hobbies should somehow support the person you’re trying to become. But real people aren’t that neat.

You can be ambitious and creative. You can be analytical and artistic. You can love dressing up and still spend your weekends in something completely casual. You can work in a corporate environment and have tattoos all over your body. You can be interested in technology and also love something completely unrelated to it. You can have a career that moves through several industries instead of one perfectly planned path.

None of those things cancel each other out.

In fact, I think those combinations are often what make people interesting.

The things you pick up along the way don’t have to be directly related to become valuable. Your experiences change how you see things. They change how you solve problems. They change what you notice. They give you references other people might not have.

That’s true in design, and it’s true in life.

The same goes for your home, your clothes and the things you love. They should be allowed to reflect the fact that you’ve changed over time. They don’t need to look like you selected your entire identity from one catalog.

And I really don’t think the answer is to reject every trend or become deliberately unconventional. That’s just another box, and I’m not interested in trading one set of rules for another.

If you genuinely love minimalism, great. If you love neutrals, wear them. If your entire house is beige and you genuinely love it, I’m not coming for you.

The question is whether you actually like it.

Do you actually love that aesthetic, or have you just seen it so many times that it feels familiar? Do you actually want that career, or do you like what it says about you? Do you genuinely want to specialize in one tiny professional niche, or have you been convinced that being broad makes you harder to sell?

Do you actually want that life?

Or do you just want the approval that comes with it?

That’s the uncomfortable part.

Because sometimes we’re making choices for ourselves, and sometimes we’re making choices because we know other people will approve.

Most of us do some version of this. I certainly have.

Being different can be exhausting. Sometimes it’s easier to wear the thing, take the job, decorate the house or make the choice that everyone understands.

But there’s a cost to always choosing what’s easiest to explain.

Eventually, you can get so good at being the version of yourself that other people approve of that you stop knowing what you actually want.

That’s the part that bothers me.

Not that everyone is going to become boring. Not that everyone needs to dress like they’re in a 1997 Gap ad. It’s that we can become so accustomed to outside opinions that we stop developing our own.

Some of the most interesting people are the ones who don’t make immediate sense. Their careers have weird twists. Their houses have things from five different decades. Their wardrobes don’t belong to one aesthetic. Their hobbies have absolutely nothing to do with their jobs. Their tattoos don’t match. They have interests that seem completely unrelated until you actually get to know them.

That’s personality.

That’s what makes someone memorable.

I don’t want everything in my life to match. I don’t want my career to fit into one tiny category. I don’t want my wardrobe to have one aesthetic. I don’t want every interest I have to somehow support a personal brand.

Honestly, I don’t even want a personal brand.

I want a personality.

Maybe we could all stand to ask ourselves a very basic question a little more often: Do I actually like this?

Not, “Is this cool?”

Not, “Will people like it?”

Not, “Does this fit my aesthetic?”

Just, “Do I like it?”

And then actually listen to the answer.

Wear the thing that doesn’t quite go with the rest of your closet. Put the weird painting in your living room. Take the class that has absolutely nothing to do with your career. Get the tattoo that doesn’t match the others. Apply for the job that doesn’t make your résumé look perfectly linear. Pick up the hobby you’re terrible at. Change your mind.

Let yourself be a little all over the place.

Because trends are fun. Inspiration is fun. We’re all influenced by other people. That’s normal. The goal isn’t to become some completely original person who has never been influenced by anything.

But the goal is to take what you like and make it yours.

That’s what I miss about the 90s and early 2000s. People participated in trends, but they still seemed to have their own interpretation of them. There was more personality in the mix. More experimentation. More willingness to combine things that didn’t necessarily belong together.

Maybe that’s what we need again.

Not people trying desperately to blend in, but people who are comfortable enough with themselves to stop worrying so much about whether everything fits.

You don’t have to be one thing.

There’s nothing wrong with fitting into a box when you chose the box yourself.

The problem is when you’ve been living in it so long that you forget you can leave.