Lusting for Lately

Spring has sprung and that means suddenly all of the minimalist beautiful tumblr post I see fill me with envy and I find myself, sadly, without any finances with which I can selfishly buy all the things I want. Spring is so short here in Texas that I'm already dreading the summer I can feel rapidly approaching. For now I will enjoy the beautiful cool nights and mornings and not think about the months to come. 

Lately I've been stressed and excited. I have a big idea for what I want to do with my life, but find myself without the connections or resources to do this. I know it's possible, I just have to decide which difficult path I want to go down. All expensive, all time consuming, but certainly worth it. So for now, I will peruse the internet, tumbling down the deepest pathways of online forums and beauty blogs to find more things I don't need (but really, really want).

 1. Cute storage. I have always loved these kind from Urban. I don't know why I love simple glass/ metal pairings so much, but I do!

 2. I LOVE Diptyque candles, and I remember smelling (I think) this fragrance several years ago at Nordstrom. I told her I wanted something woodsy and not too feminine. I always told myself I would get it after I used up my Hermes one, but alas, that is still very full. I need to remember to wear my perfume every day!

 3. Photo from this website. I really want to read more and this book really interests me. I don't love the NastyGal company, mostly because I think the clothes are for a very limited number of people and I'm definitely not one of them, nor do I really love the styles. But I love the company's CEO. I read a little of this book when I was in the bookstore and I loved her voice, her work ethic, and her frugalness.

 4. This Drew bag by Chloe is so beautiful to me. I love the gold hardware, I love the shape of it, but most of all I love the lock system they have in place. I think this would be such a cute color with my color palette I'm always wearing (think creams, whites, blues, and black). I'm trying to add more color into my life (seriously I'm wearing grey on grey on grey today) so this is a good starting point. Baby steps!

 5. I have wanted a moisturizing, glowy lotion for a while now and I've heard great things about this one. Also fun that you can put it in your hair! I know I'm a pale, white, bed-sheet ghost, but I still want to pretend I can have fun and tan with the girls and you know, I think this oil could do the trick.

6. Photo found here. I am DYING to have shinier, softer hair and I've heard this product is amazing. I'm hoping after a few more Posh sales/ I finally get paid that I will be able to purchase this. I've heard you can wear it as a mask or even over night and it just restores your hair and makes it so shiny and soft.

What have you been lusting after lately? Have you tried any of these products? Comment below!

The Road to Accutane and Living to Tell the Tale

So... everyone gets acne when they're a teenager, right? (Probably right, I mean, I hope that's right...)

I did, and all my friends did, too. Here is a really embarrassing photo: 

See? Embarrassing. Redness, blotchiness... all around not a good time. And I was doing everything. Foam cleansers, milk cleansers, oil cleansers, oil free, you name it, I tried it. I also tried harsh salicylic acid and benzoyl treatments... didn't work. 

Flash forward to college. Not only had my problems not been reduced at all, they had actually gotten worse. 

As you can see I was getting large lumps on my face. I have probably deleted all the photos of my really bad cystic acne, but it went all along my jawline. It was painful and I felt hopeless. I didn't want to see anyone and make up didn't really cover it that well. And trust me, at that time there were no youtube gurus telling you had to do all these things. You had to do it the hard trial and error way! 

Finally I went to go see my dermatologist. We talked about some of my medical problems (blood clotting and PCOS) and she recommended I go on accutane. I wanted to more than anything. The promise of healthy skin was too great, even with the warning that acne could come back, I was ready to try anything. 

Before you can take the medicine, if you're a girl, you need to take a pregnancy test. You also need to provide tow forms of birth control to prove that you won't be able to get pregnant while on the medication. Every month they took my blood to make sure my liver and blood sugars were healthy. It was painful at times and time consuming. Keep this in mind before you consider accutane! 

The summer I started accutane was really hard. I had injured my foot and gained weight. I was depressed (without linking it to my medication) and I wanted to bury myself, away from friends and prying eyes. The sun burned so badly, I felt sick every time I walked outside. My skin would burn (still does tbh) incredibly easily. Even with sunscreen, a hat, and staying under an umbrella, I felt queasy being out in the sun. 

Most of the time I stayed indoors

My hair started changing it's shape.

Before accutane: 

After/ During:

My hair got super brittle and dry. It was frizzy ALL the time, my fly-aways were out of control no matter how many deep conditioning treatments or oils I used. It took two years post accutane for my hair to get semi-normal! 

There are so many side effects to accutane. And they are really all possible. The ones I had to deal with:

• hair change 
• dry skin/ lips
• eye problems 
• depression
• higher liver enzymes
• higher triglyceride levels 

My eyes were more sensitive but I also started getting a ton of styes in my eyes. They were really painful and I hated going to class (I was in college at the time). I finally found a way to get rid of them (green tea packet, warm water, keep it on your eye overnight with medical tape!) I found out from my eye doctor that accutane dries up the oil in your body that produces acne. This can also dry up the oil around your eye, causing blockage problems. 

Because my liver and triglyceride levels were up, I had to be put on a smaller dose over a larger period of time-- one year. After six months my skin was pretty much perfect. All my blackheads fell out, my pores became smaller. But my doctor recommended I stay on the medication for longer to lower the chance of acne coming back. 

I'm going to be honest... I got really bad depression on accutane. I've had situational depression before, and I know many of my family members struggle with depression. If you have depression or are worried about it, talk to your dermatologist about it! Do NOT keep that information from them. I'm a generally happy person but I found that when taking accutane I was incredibly depressed. Only when I finished the medicine did that fog lift and I realized the medicine was what caused it. I lost a lot of friends and wasted a lot of time because I refused to admit that I was having a period of depression. 

For dry lips, the only thing that would keep my lips moisturized was AQUAPHORE. I got 12 packets of it in my stocking that Christmas. It was a life saver! I took it everywhere with me. I highly recommend it. Conventional lip balm didn't cut it. 

Now... would I do it again? Yes. Even though I think I have a persisting eye problem because of accutane, I love my skin now. Yes, some of my pores opened up a little bit (though not as large as pre-accutane). Sometimes I get a few spots when my period is about to start or I'm stressed. But for the most part, I'm pain free, cyst free, and really happy with my complexion. I recommend it. 

This is me now!! 

I only use a cleansing water from Bioderma as my skin is now more sensitive than it used to be. I also use BB or CC cream or a light tinted moisturizer. I rarely, if ever, like to use a real honest-to-goodness foundation. I like my natural skin! If you have any questions about accutane, please don't hesitate to send me a message or comment below! 

Yes, I'm Alive

I feel like I told SOOOO many people I would keep my blog updated and now I feel like I'm letting them down. SO I've been meaning to write a blog post but in all honesty I'm so exhausted all the time. This is a lot to adjust to so I hope you will be patient with me.

aside from crazy eyes this pretty much sums up my relationship with this kid. I love him!

CCTV all day every day

Miss that cut out (its gone now)

A cafe I used to frequent when I was staying in that area.

Seoul Forest.

Birthday party

Birthday parties 

Found and finally had the confidence to go inside the taco bell. Worth it. 

Seoul Forest again (I love it). 

In front of Lotte Hotel near City Hall. I love how the trees are still SO orange! 

When I stumbled on the lantern festival.

This kid. 

Seoul Forest. 

Just a little Texas representation. 

The lantern festival part II. 

Also this past weekend I went clubbing in Gangnam and it was so awesome. Also this weekend Rebekah visited and we had such a good time. We went to Seoul Forest and hung out in cafe's and went to Hongdae it was great. Other things that happened:

- My dress caught on fire (it is literally just like in the movies)

- The Mcdonalds delivery man and I had a really intense moment that Rebekah creeped on hard core in the background 

- I became obsessed with Taeyang from Big Bang and I don't know how but now that's a thing and I kind of hate myself for it b/c white people that get SUPER into Korea/ Japan/ any Asian country can be super annoying and weird so yeah. But look where we are that's the way she goes.

- My diet right now mostly consists of rice and kimchi and that really isn't a lie or an exaggeration like it's what I had for lunch and dinner.

- I've had so much kimchi that now I can tell what's good and what's not good isn't that weird (probably not weird to Koreans but I used to never taste a difference)

- Mosquitos here actually don't die ever and they are still all inside the building and there are some in my apartment and I really hate it like they NEED to die

- They don't really heat water in bathrooms here so when you wash your hands in winter it really blows

- I don't know what I'll be doing or where I'll be for Christmas and that's so weird.

- I got a Korean phone finally (and the adorable lil' guy at the phone place gave me a free phone case insisting that this was NOT normal policy but it was his gift to me and now I have to pass by every day and it's only a lil awk) （//･_･//)

- I danced w/ a cutie at da club

Thoughts: On Turning 25 (LOTS of photos)

I've got 24 more minutes left on the clock before I'm legally 25 years old. As a very nostalgic person, I've of course spent the past few weeks going back and forth about this birthday. To me, the number is so big. I had so much I thought I would have accomplished by this birthday. When you're a teenager you think that your twenties are so far away. I've found old conversations between friends through letters, messages, and e-mails where we talk about where we would be around this age. I know I thought I'd be married, have a job, and know where my life was going. With 20 minutes till 25, I can tell you I have no idea where my life is going.
These years have been full of ups and downs.
High school was the best and the worst:

 woops how did that get in there

College was basically just my travel phase where I explored the world and realized there were a lot more people than just me. And lots of people had it harder than me, and I was pretty lucky. I learned humility and I learned respect for cultures. I found a passion for languages and traveling, networking and meeting genuine people. I really fell in love with the world, all parts of it. 

I only have three minutes left, and I have to say, I'm sad to see the past 24 years go. I'm so lucky to have lived them. It reminds me of a poem I once read, Lucky Life by Gerald Stern:

Each year I go down to the island I add
one more year to the darkness;
and though I sit up with my dear friends
trying to separate the one year from the other,
this one from the last, that one from the former,
another from another,
after a while they all get lumped together,
the year we walked to Holgate,
the year our shoes got washed away,
the year it rained,
the year my tooth brought misery to us all.
. . .
My dream is I sleep upstairs over the honey locust
and sit on the side porch overlooking the stone culvert
with a whole new set of friends, mostly old and humorless.
Dear waves, what will you do for me this year?
Will you drown out my scream?
Will you let me rise through the fog?
Will you fill me with that old salt feeling?
Will you let me take my long steps in the cold sand?
Will you let me lie on the white bedspread and study
the black clouds with the blue holes in them?
Will you let me see the rusty trees and the old monoplanes one more year?
Will you still let me draw my sacred figures
and move the kites and the birds around with my dark mind?
Lucky life is like this. Lucky there is an ocean to come to.
Lucky you can judge yourself in this water.
Lucky you can be purified over and over again.
Lucky there is the same cleanliness for everyone.
Lucky life is like that. Lucky life. Oh lucky life.
Oh lucky lucky life. Lucky life. 

Lucky life. I'm not going to lie and say it's been a really easy journey. I've dealt with a lot of emotional problems, health problems, personal grief, and just plain drama. I know there will be more of that in the years to come. But...
I'm excited to see what I will do with my future. I hope I can make it better than my past. I hope I can fight apathy and lethargy and make every day count for something and not waste my time. I hope I can keep traveling and documenting my life in a way that spurs my creativity. Thanks if you're reading this. Happy earthday, happy birthday, happy un birthday. I hope everyone is happy today.