Us tech professionals are notorious for our sense of style; jeans and a graphic t-shirt/hoodie are becoming the standard work uniform. I dressed like this for a while, and sometimes still do.

But when I did dress like that, I didn’t really stand out, especially in tech hubs like San Francisco and Austin. Style was never something I cared much about, and I kind of liked feeling invisible. And in the end, it was a lonely experience.

Last month, I went to a wedding in a small town in Connecticut. I had time to kill before the ceremony, so I hit up a local flea market. I ended up buying a pair of blue-tinted glasses for $8. I happened to bring a blue suit with me, so I decided to be curious and experiment with putting them together. And I really liked the end result.

These glasses quickly became one of my favorite accessories. I wear them not just with my blue suit, but with regular street clothes as well. Though I will say: there is some irony in getting LASIK only to revert to wearing glasses as a style piece.

In all of this, I’m learning to own my sense of style. I combine those glasses with my long hair and a plaid jacket from the clearance section of Target, and I have a pretty good hippie-ish vibe going:

With these small changes, I’ve started getting compliments on my sense of style and appearance. And honestly, I’m still in denial about it sometimes. At times, I have trouble accepting that type of input, and I think that’s just a commentary on my low self-esteem.

Denial’s a tricky subject: my brain will rationalize away any thoughts or input that I just cannot accept, even the positive ones. I’ll subconsciously find ways to ignore or filter it out, or pretend that it’s not directed at me.

I don’t like to be superficial, but I do want my outward expression to reflect the inner beauty. There’s a lot of phrases that tie into that: “dress for success”, or “clothes make the man”.

But at the end of the day, it all amounts to the same thing; invest in myself, because I get to feel good about myself. I don’t want to feel invisible anymore; I deserve to take up space and have a little bit of attention. I’ve been posting more regularly on Instagram because I’m proud of the thing I’m doing in my life, and want to broadcast that to the world.

It’s not hard to put these small things together, but I feel a lot better about myself when I do. And it doesn’t have to be expensive to have a sense of style; my favorite pieces came from flea markets, clearance sales, or thrift shops. I still have a lot to learn about this process. But so far I’m enjoying it.