Oh Lord
March 8th, 2009
I am kind of, totally, well, utterly disappointed with how I’ve let Dark Rose sit here in silence for another three weeks. My ability to completly ignore my own personal website is kind of depressing, but not nearly as much as the fact as how I’ve been trying to make a bright new design for it for ages and still have nothing to show for it.
One of the things that I’ve noticed recently with my websites is that I can whip up a design pretty quickly for just about everything but my personal website. My fanlistings? Cake, I remember getting four or five layouts done over the course of a week for them. My friends? The design I made for Kae took me one night and I think it both fits her personality and website fairly well and also looks rather nice.
But man, if it’s for me? I can’t do it. I just can’t. It took me a few weeks to make the current layout too, and even then I don’t think it especially screams my name. This site is mine, it should have “AMBER” written in bolded, italic, neon, capital serif letters (okay, maybe not neon, I hate neon) stamped all over it. Because your website’s design is supposed to reflect who you are, right? At least, that’s what I always read, same goes for content too.
Actually, maybe my current layout does say enough about me. “Hi, I’m Amber, and I am completely uninspired at the moment. In the mean time: my fondness for typography and color use, let me show you them.” Don’t get me wrong, I do like my layout, but I feel like it’s a fairly weak version of my skills. I’d like to feature my art in a design again and make it truly mine, instead of using precise preset shapes; that’s not me, I’m fully capable of making my own stuff, so what am I doing? And yet every time I do go to make a new theme, I end up losing my inspiration or getting a new one. So often do I find myself loving a layout that I’m in the process of making and then suddenly trashing it because I began to hate it half an hour later.
Usually when I lose my inspiration for something, I try to listen to music and get a feel for the outcome I’m looking for. Once I find the song that fits the idea I’m going with most, I listen to it on repeat. Over and over. As I do this habitually on a regular basis, it does not drive me insane and instead keeps me going with my idea. I also like to go to Color Schemers and Color Lovers to try and find schemes that I like enough to incorporate into a design. Ironically, I’ve been uploading color schemes that I’ve both used in past designs and randomly come up with and yet I’m still completely stuck. Apparently there’s ideas in there, I just have to force ‘em out…
Honesty
February 14th, 2009
I think it’s really interesting how being honest can make everything more complicated than it needs to be. I probably shouldn’t be broadcasting my stupidity, but I ran into a problem at work on Wednesday. We have four U-scans at our supermarket, and at the front is a desk where one employee stands and makes sure customers are actually ringing up their stuff and oversees any problems they might run into along the way. Now, I’m not too experienced with heading U-scan. I can ring up my own stuff fine, but for the most part, when it comes to helping customers with theirs, I’m not very good at it. Quite honestly, I was not trained as well as I would have liked to have been before they stuck me there.
So, on Wednesday, I had to watch U-scan for about an hour. During this hour, I perform a simple transaction for cigarettes - ironically, someone I graduated with asked for them (making this ten times worse). I ID the person, scan the product, she pays, and we’re both off on our merry way. Or so I think, until I’m sitting in the truck on the way home and think it’s kind of odd that eight packs of cigarettes only rang up for $7.22. And then I realized… that I only scanned one pack.
At first it was like a playful joke with myself, and so I brushed it off and stared at the sunset. Except that after that awful realization, I couldn’t get it out of my fucking head. Had I really done that? Really? Then the dreaded question: Should I say something?
Anyone that I’ve talked to on AIM during the time in between Wednesday and today are well aware that I’ve been scattering my brains over this situation. In my heart, I knew I had to tell someone. My brain, on the other hand, was screaming NAY, DAMMIT, NAY!!! A breakdown as to why:
- The Pros of Telling: Wouldn’t be hiding anything, wouldn’t feel as awful, and it wouldn’t come back to bite me in the ass if they found out for themselves.
- The Cons of Telling: I could be fired!
While there are more pros, the single con is clinching. No one wants to lose their job, especially not now, and I also really like it there and have made some of what I would call friends. As a result of my dilemma, I sought help and advice from my friends and family; my friends said I should say something, and my family said I shouldn’t. With encouragement from Kae and Larissa, I planned on telling a superior about what happened, even though I constantly brought it up, almost as if I wanted them to tell me I shouldn’t. I felt like it had to be done, but I didn’t want to do it. Receiving a call to come in two hours early from the same person I planned to confront didn’t make it any easier.
The actual scene at work was almost nothing, though. I walked in, I clocked in, and then I went straight to my supervisor and asked if I could speak to her in private. I told her what happened, apologized, and offered to cover the loss with my paycheck, and all she said was to be careful. I lost the company $50 worth of cigarettes… and all she told me was to be careful. I feel relieved that I’m not in trouble (as far as I know), and that I told someone, but at the same time it just seems like I would have received some sort of slap on the wrist, an audit, something. Maybe I’m just a masochist?
With the result in mind, I feel kind of silly fretting over whether to be honest or not. In fact, it’s kind of disgusting, how much I had to consider it before deciding to be up front. To be honest. Is it natural to have this great inner conflict? Is this a personal thing, or a result of the state of the world? A combination? What if I hadn’t said anything? Would I have done the same thing if there had been absolutely no way to trace it back to me? If there was an alternate universe where I didn’t say a word, what would I be feeling right now?
And most importantly, what would you have done?
A Quest for Skin Care Products
February 3rd, 2009
My mom tells me that I have pretty good skin, but then of course she does, she’s my mom. It’s not like I am so pimply that I am a bona fide pizza face, but I have those sort of red blotches underneath my skin and it’s also sort of oily in some places and dry in others. Oh yes - apparently, my skin type is combination. I also get pimples here and there too, but nothing serious.
Now that I have money and work in a supermarket of all places, I am at liberty to buy skin care products for myself and see what works and what doesn’t. It’s almost intimidating to go to the beauty section and see the various bottle shapes and wonder which one to invest in. While it has only been a little less than two weeks since I started trying out some new products, I’ve already developed an opinion on some of the products that I have been using and thought I would share them with you today.
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Neutrogena Transparent Facial Bar
This is actually a product that I’ve been using for about a year and a half. I like these bars a lot because they’re kind to my sensitive skin and really do help keep acne at bay. Before I started using them, I’d have pimples all over the place and get them randomly, but I’ve only been getting them here and there every few weeks and sometimes even months. I will say that, as with all products, you want to rinse your skin really thoroughly after washing your face with it because it will make your skin dry in those areas where you didn’t rinse enough. On the other hand, the facial bars are also good for moisturizing the skin a little bit, because I used to get dry patches throughout the day prior to using them.
Price: They cost differently depending on where you go, but at my supermarket they’re about a dollar.
Verdict: Thumbs up! -
Clean & Clear Morning Burst Detoxifying Facial Cleanser
I was very excited when I bought this because it’s not so much the surface of my skin that I dislike, but I think the red blotches underneath it are caused by trapped dirt that my trusty Neutrogena bar can’t really get to. I wanted a cleanser to really get down there and do the job, and since I read a lot of nice reviews about Clean & Clear on product pages and was entranced by the commercials (yeah, okay, I’m gullible, sue me), I thought I’d give one of their products a shot.
The detoxifying cleanser has bursting beads inside it that are supposed to release antioxidants and make your skin feel all fresh, clean and healthy. When I first applied it, I felt very clean, felt the tingle, and totally thought “WOW, I DON’T REGRET BUYING THIS AT ALL!”
Two days later? Yeah, I got a big ass pimple on my cheek that’s actually still stuck on my face. I’m also having smaller breakouts around my mouth and on my nose, and seeing as I haven’t even had a breakout for months, I’m going to blame it on this product. It also dried some of my skin in the same areas where there are now pimples. Maybe I didn’t wash it thoroughly enough, or maybe the ingredients are too strong for sensitive skin, but I would not recommend this product to anyone who isn’t planning on joining a chess club.
So, while it does wake you up, soften your skin and make you feel fresh, it does nothing good for your complexion.
Price: $6-$8
Verdict: No, just no. -
Clean & Clear Oil-Free Dual Action Moisturizer
I bought this moisturizer with the cleanser to help make my skin softer and protect it a little better. For the most part, my feelings on this are mostly apathetic, because it is supposed to keep my skin healthy and help protect it from breakouts, the latter of which has clearly failed (i.e. giant cheek pimple and smaller breakouts). It’s also supposed to keep my skin from forming those dry patches, which it also didn’t do after the cleanser did its, uh, thing.
So really, my skin hasn’t really improved or been exacerbated as a result of using this product.
Price: $4-$5
Verdict: Eh. It’s pretty ineffective, so I wouldn’t recommend it to you, but it could just be me, too. -
St. Ives Apricot Scrub (Renew and Firm)
I actually bought this on a recommendation from a YouTube video, because the girl actually went through and explained how it helped and I felt like I could really trust her. I know that sounds weird, but I’d rather buy something on a recommendation than on a random whim. So anyway, I bought it and brought it home, and… it’s amazing. There are grains in the cream that smooth your skin out (though don’t scrub the hell out of your skin with it, and it’s precisely because of those grains that you don’t want to do that) and make it so the cleanser can penetrate the skin and actually get down in there and clear it out.
On its own, the scrub made my skin really soft, and I noticed a difference in my skin within the first few HOURS. The clear bumps I had on my forehead vanished and my skin became really polished. It has also been very helpful with getting rid of the Clean & Clear massacre that was my face. My pimple is still here, but now it’s more of a dull patch of color on my skin as opposed to the pulsating volcano it was before I bought it. (I bought the scrub a few days after the cleanser, so it hasn’t taken that long for it to kick in.)
You might be thinking that the renew and firm is a bit ridiculous for me to have when I’m 19 right now, but trust me, I’m not using it because I think I look totally old (people think I’m 15 at work, dude). I chose it because it has alpha hydroxy in it, and so it gets rid of all my gross little dead skin cell thingies. It also made my skin look brighter (I didn’t think it was possible LOL), but in a good way!
Price: I bought mine for $2.99, but it’s also a sale item at my store. :3
Verdict: BUY IT.
After all of this, I’m ironically still using the Clean & Clear products in conjunction with St. Ives and Neutrogena. What can I say? I’m cheap! Plus, there’s still a lot of stuff in their containers and I’m thinking that I wasn’t rinsing well enough when I first started using the cleanser, which certainly couldn’t have helped the Squidtastic version of the Red Scare. However, once they’re through (or if I get another breakout), I’ll be switching to a more gentle cleanser and hopefully a more effective moisturizer.
Anyway, I hope this has been helpful or at least amusing to read, and I’ll be sure to share any further notable results.
