make-up

Creativity and Boredom

- Cimpossible Leave a comment

successful creative life requires a high tolerance for boredom and repetition.

It is the long weekend here in the United States because of Thanksgiving. The turkey, or goat meat, has been eaten.  Tables have been cleared and the fridge is heaving with leftovers. I am getting back to the business of life via binge watching Youtube.

I have watched so many beauty tutorials, I feel like I can blend out my crease while sleeping and still have a flawless finish. I have recently gotten back into watching beauty tutorials because I have recently started falling back in love with myself. Every time I get sucked into the black hole that is Youtube, it always amazes how much growth that platform has experienced.

My adventure with Youtube started 10 years ago. I remember watching Panacea81  channel back in the days. She was the one that really got me to think about buying brushes instead of using the tiny brushes that came with the makeup kit. Of course, times have changed now on Youtube. There are now thousands and thousands of beauty vloggers alone. There are all sorts of categories of Youtube channels.

Today, while I was watching Nikkie Tutorials channel, she mentioned that she had been making Youtube videos for 9 years. It occurred to me that I don’t think I have committed to anything for that long in my life. As I hopped through channels, I realized that the vloggers that I like are the ones that have been doing it for a long time. They are the ones that have built their contents even when they were making no money off it.

I have made an effort to seek out new Youtube beauty channels. When I say new, I mean channels that are just coming up. I love watching Kyra Knox these days. I am also a fan of Joulezy. These are channels that haven’t cracked the PR list for the most part yet or built a massive audience yet.

As I watch these women who are bravely starting channels and consistently putting themselves out there, I am inspired to figure out how I want to present myself to the world. I have filmed videos intending to start a Youtube channel for years and I back down because I am too scared to put myself out into the world in that way. I have walked away from blogs and deleted blogs because I am more comfortable with admitting defeat than imagining success.

Elizabeth Gilbert’s Big Magic came on my radar, a couple of weeks back, via my friend Bukky. Big Magic is a book that explores being creative through fear. I haven’t gotten around to reading the book yet. Instead, I have been listening to her podcast. It has made me realize that living a successful creative life requires a high tolerance for boredom and repetition. Sometimes, I imagine that as a creative person everything I do will be exciting and groundbreaking. The truth is that in order to be creative and develop the skills I need to execute at a higher level, I need to be okay with failing and repeating the same things until I get it right. I need to be okay with being ok instead of being great. I need to realize that building audience takes time. I need to accept that there is no perfect time to start being creative.

The other day I was on the Ipsy Facebook page when I saw a video that inspired me. The video was a collaboration with Maryam Remias. Maryam Remias is an older woman with grey hair and tips dyed a vibrant purple. She is not what anybody would assume to be the target audience for make-up but she clearly is interested so she has a Youtube channel doing tutorials for older women. Watching her on the Ipsy page made me realize there is no bad time to tap into my interests and creativity. There is not a tipping point where I am suddenly qualified to start chasing my dreams.

I don’t know where I am heading creatively with this blog yet. However, I do know that I am going to try my best to keep showing up. I have to do it for myself to exercise that consistency muscle. Eventually, I hope I’ll find my rhythm and my path would be clearer than it is now.

In the meantime, I have to go back to Youtube and catch up with Shameless Maya who inspires me every day to live my life vicariously. I have to see what slay Jackie Aina has created for my black skin. Maybe when I am done, I’ll fall asleep listening to Kina Grannis.

Self-care And The Seduction of Self

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“Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare”

-Audre Lorde

I recently read this quote somewhere random and it stuck in my head all of this past week. Self-care is something that I sometimes neglect. My lack of self-care is not a reflection of my self-esteem. For me, my lack of self-care is reflection of the importance I place on my own agenda in lot of ways. There are basic things that make me happy. I like the way my face looks with make-up on. I do much better when I am physically active. I blossom when I make myself a healthy meal.

Somehow, even though I know what makes me happy, I find myself cheating myself out of my self-care routine. A few weeks ago, I started massaging my feet and my joints before going to bed. A couple of weeks after starting this soothing routine, I stopped. I just do not enough place emphasis on my own self-care.

This past week, I started wearing make-up to work, again. Instead of placing emphasis on getting to work extremely early, I chose to place the emphasis on looking as I desired. Putting on make-up for me is a seduction of self. It is a moment of vanity when I look at my face and touch my face. I acknowledge my own beauty and allow myself the creativity of choosing who I want to be for the dance of the day. A bright red lipstick to make my lips look full. A girly pink for my feminine days. A smokey eye for the days when I want to catch the gaze.

Putting on make-up is one of the few times when I get to look at my body. I generally don’t dress with a mirror. I actually haven’t owned a full-length mirror in a long time. I find that I like to avoid my body in some ways. I love getting dressed in the morning. I love putting things together and playing with shapes, textures and patterns. I can tell if an outfit fits by the way my body feels in it. To look at my body however is to ask too much of my fragile self. I have learnt to engage with my body in a way that is not threatening to me. Looking at my face is one of the joys I get from a mirror though.

I was thinking about this self-care quote tonight when I decided to play around with my face. I sometimes miss the days when I used to wear a lot of color on my face to work. These days, I am firmly in the nude/brown palette phase. I am enjoying the brown/bronze/black look alot. I tend to concentrate lots of drama on my lips with bright reds and pinks in the summer. This past fall/winter I was really into plums and wines. Tonight though, I sought out my gold dust and played fairy on my face. It is a bit of a wild look but there was so much joy in playing with that face. So much joy!

Do you have a self-care routine that makes you feel your best? Let me know in the comment section.