Aging and My Three Reasons Why I Think It's Not A Big Deal...Self-Growth

(First of all, I didn't mean to make this post around certain loved ones of mine's birthdays.  That's sheer coincidence and I just realized this about 35 min into writing the entry.  This entry is not directed to anyone at all, and is meant to be helpful, fun, and insightful for anyone who stumbles upon it, just like every other entry I've ever written in the blog).

HI party people!!!  (I'm only saying that because it sounds so ridiculous here and my sense of humor is kind of to put things/say things in situations where they completely don't seem to go!  I hear several grasshoppers in the difference, some mouse-clicks over some X's, and I can almost feel the glaring scowls at the computer screen right now...but I don't care, you're going to have to deal with my unique sense of humor, because it's here to stay.)

I have had some time and with time... I GET TO THINK.  And with my thoughts...comes DANGEROUS proportions.

Well, blog entries. :)  Although I prefer to imbue (imbue!!!!  HAH!!  My favorite word...it sounds so funny!!!  I'm sure that was out of context, but I just felt the need to use the word imbue) this blog as a Professional Journal without all the boredom/scientific terms/repetitiveness in my head.

I hope I don't sound like one of those generic youtubers (of which I've been studying way too many for makeup-learning-purposes for my job [OKAY AND for personal enjoyment] etc, etc.  I hope they aren't rubbing off on me!  Why do so many always start and end their videos the same way?  And endorse things the same ways?  Is it just a comfort-zone thing?)

OMG.  *Slaps own wrist*  Time to get with the program. (Considers deleting all of the above.  But of course I won't because...I don't have to! :)  I love that about this thing)



Working sort of in the doorway (well maybe like 8 inches AWAY from the doorway...but still NEAR the doorway) of the beauty industry (as a cashier lol), I've been thinking a lot lately about aging.  And of course because it is MY brain, I had to turn innocent skin-care shopping into some sort of philosophical concept.  Anyway, we all know this already, but clearly...blah blah...there's a lot of dread having to do with age.

But I don't think there has to be! :)

First of all:

.5)  Gray hair is BEAUTIFUL.  I just found my first five or six gray hairs the other day.  They are all rather short, like they all decided to just grow in and decide to be gray a few weeks ago.  'Oh hello there Lyza, we are gray now, just decided a couple weeks ago, what's up!?'  But they're really sparkly and silvery, which I rather like.  And as long as we keep it healthy, I don't see how it's this horrible thing... if you keep your hair as soft and shiny as possible, what's wrong with gray hair?  Dye it if you want...but I don't think it's something to be ashamed of.  (Why did I put this as number one, like it's so important??  Please keep reading...hope I haven't lost anybody :P )

1)  Every year, you get a bit wiser, a bit more comfortable with yourself, and a bit more intolerant to bullshit.  Situations dealing with other people, time thinking to yourself, and thinking about how to handle these situations for the future simply does this to you naturally.  Time does this.  Time creates comfort in places that were new--life--and comfort allows you to be more open and honest about how you're really feeling.  Time also allows you to be comfortable expressing when you're uncomfortable.  You realize--I don't HAVE to feel bad about the opinions I am forming because someone told me I should.  I feel this way based on the knowledge I accrued over time, and it makes a lot of sense that I feel this way.  And because of that logic, you can feel proud expressing the thoughts you have, be they positive or negative.  Even if they are wrong every once in a while--you can feel comfortable expressing your thoughts and comfortable negotiating different opinions and accepting when you are wrong--that is true maturity--and I know plenty of people of all ages, old or young, who are terrible at doing that, but it's part of self-growth and being a good person.  I can't wait to see the Lyza I am ten years from now-because she sure is kicking it now.  I'm thinking I'm about to be a B.O.S.S.  Are you too?

I have heard that our mental stamina is at it's height in our mid-twenties...never to reach it's peak again.  However, mid-twenties is still very young.  It may be at it's height, but who is to say it is being put to good use?  Everyone is a little different, everyone matures differently and I don't think that our supposed "mental decline," has to be so dramatic.  We can NOT however, use our aging as an excuse to evade personal growth and still take true pride in who we are.  We all know people who do this.  If you want to truly be a decent person, you have to be compassionate for others, accept when you are wrong, and be open-minded to new ideas (last one being the hardest as our physical brains do lose plasticity, and therefore lose the ability to be open-minded, as we age...which is why I believe the terrible human traditions, are/have been so hard to break!).

My advice on your brain losing plasticity:  The BEST thing you can do for your mental health is to make it a practice to be open-minded--every single day of every year.  Put changing things up into practice--don't get too caught up in any routine and always allow yourself to hear opinions different from your own.  It probably won't eradicate the problem--but it could only help.

2)  Every year, you get better at knowing what you want, and how to say no to the things that you don't want.  It seems pretty base--knowing what you want, but it's actually kind of hard to really know everything about what you want, at any age, because there's so many choices to be made about so many different things, that we can't really know until we attempt to make these choices, learn more about what we are about to do, or have the wisdom to know that certain things we are being advised to do simply aren't logical for us.

 I had no idea I would hate college when I started it at age 18 or that it was corrupt for my elders at school to pressure us all to make such an impacting financial choice at such a young, impressionable age.  I had no idea that some of my strengths would include being good at reading people, understanding situations, and problem-solving.  I had no idea most of the people making others unhappy are unhappy themselves.  And no idea how to handle those people when push comes to shove.  I had no idea sometimes people stick to a terrible opinion just out of pride, and not because there's any real logic to it.  5 or 6 years ago it was harder for me to separate truth from opinion and to know who was selfish, who was well-meaning but wrong, and who was just using poor logic and needed an upgrade.  I had no idea about tons of things just 5 or 6 years ago.  But now that I know these things--I am standing at the tip of the iceberg on my life--on what I want, what will make me happy, and how I will and do handle situations when things inevitably get tough.  And my logic makes me 100% comfortable standing up for my beliefs when someone disagrees with me.  Beliefs should be formed through logical argument--not through others but through your own trains of thought and your own desire to be a good person.  We're NOT going to be good at everything and we're NOT going to get everything right because we're human and part of maturity is accepting that and being able to be fine with it.  ALSO--what makes you happy may NOT make someone else happy.  But, when you know what the HELL you want for your own life and your own happiness, and you have good foundations for your beliefs--even if you have to be tough on people at first because they want you to be a different way--you make yourself and you make the world a better, more accepting and balanced place for everyone.  That's just what the simple combination of logic, truth, and happiness does.  It starts a chain-reaction of positivity--as long as you act on it.  As time goes on, you do get better at putting yourself in a place where you are happier because of what you'll inevitably learn about yourself, and that's the wonderful thing about aging.

3.)  Life gets easier when you know what you want and know how to act on it.  I'm not saying you won't have as many or more problems than you do now, when you are older.  But, when you're not like a lost baby bird, it certainly does help.  Experience does bring about a certain calm on things that may have totally daunted you when you first started on them.  It's like any new job... For instance, doing the loud-speaker announcements at my job used to give me terrible nerves...now I am actually excited to do them.  You also learn how to pull yourself out of situations that are not right for you or good for you, which can be difficult all in it's own for some people, especially if you don't realize that they're not right.  Hard things become easy...every new thing becomes a new opportunity, to scare yourself, to challenge yourself, and to realize that was scary to you in the past is actually not a big deal at all.  So things in a way get easier--mainly because you know how to handle them better--that's the nature of experience.


ThankYOU. :)

That's all for now, I hope I helped, and I hate writing conclusion paragraphs.


EDIT:  I'm re-reading this and I know some of my wording comes off as really hilarious...almost like a parody and not like something to be taken seriously (example:  "...What the HELL you want..."  I didn't want to professionalize this entry... I just wanted it to come off how I would say it in person, and a lot of times my intention is to make people laugh in addition to teaching them something.  I have a very sarcastic sense of humor that I like to mix in on occasion when I feel I'm making a strong point, but read out loud I'm thinking this could sound kind of ridiculous.  Hopefully the entry helped you in some way and I'm editing this like crazy today (just the day it was posted...it'll be completely final tomorrow...this is how I always do this).  I need to stop submitting my entries so early.  Most of the time they come out fantastically, but today's was a little jumbled and I should have waited before submitting it!!!

You Could Analyze Something To Death

September 8th??  September 8th was REALLY the last time I blogged?!  So it's been 3 weeks.  Time really, really flies guys.  It doesn't matter what I am doing.  I just feel like I'm going to be 100 tomorrow.  I thought I'd blogged last a week ago!!  Are you the same?  I remember, as a kid, time used to feel like waiting for a turtle to lick up a puddle of molasses... Now I savor every moment because I feel they are disappearing like tiny grains of surface sand on a windy day.  And maybe that's the point of this blog in a way... to focus on what's big to you, because the little disappears.

Was doing some research for my other blog, and was inspired by gradients.  When one color fades into a different color, so seamlessly it almost looks like the two could be one uniform shade.  And they could, if you backed away far enough.
I wanted to compare how an artist's gradient looked from farther away to how it looked very close up, and when I saw the close-up, it occurred to me I could see the lines of blending.  It did not look seamless.  But then it occurred to me, if I could fix the imperfections and unblended lines at the close-up, and was able to get an even larger close-up of the corrected close-up, you would still see more lines of blending.  No matter how much you, "fix," something, the closer you get to it, the more imperfections you will see, down to the microscopic level.  Until you can get to the tiniest point of existence, perfection does not exist.

So, you could spend a life-time trying your darndest to get the most, "perfect," thing, look the most, "perfect," way...Please notice, I often quote (or sometimes first-letter-capitalize) the words I don't stand by.
And when you had that perfect mesh of what you believe you're supposed to have, that gradient that may as well be one object, what have you?

Well, you have something that looks very nice.

Whether it holds moral value to you is another subject entirely.

Everything you work for, everything you do, none of it truly matters--unless it has moral value to you.  Everything aside from love and happiness are just extras in your life.  And when we keep trying to fix small things, we often are, point-blank, wasting our time.  We, for some reason, are very good at blowing tiny interactions, tiny choices, tiny situations, completely out of proportion.  And because we are giving that petty list of things meaning, whatever the list and whatever the meanings are, we focus on them and forget about what will truly fulfill us.

So when I say, "You Could Analyze Something To Death," in the blog-title, I mean it heartily.  You could analyze all the tiny things that you feel need tweaked until finally, you have no more time left.  In the end, will you appreciate the product of your work more than the experiences that it took to get you to that finished product?

Whether you are at a company balancing moral and sales, or at home balancing your life, this applies to you.  People in your life will always tell you at certain points in the path, that something needs to be tweaked.  You have to make the changes on it that are worthwhile to you.  What will you be proud of more?  How something looks, or the love and happiness you gave to get yourself there?



PS: This blog is my darling.  I love writing in here, and I don't plan to stop making posts.  I'll write in here at least once a month, if not more.  Also, please feel free to ask me questions and give suggestions for topics you'd like me to discuss. :)

It's Okay To Ride Up To A Dead End...

There might be a beautiful sunset there.

Or there may not be.  It's still perfectly okay.

I like to go on bike rides in the evening sometimes when the sun is setting.  I'll ride as far away as I can from the sun, maybe 20-40 minutes before the sun sets, and then, when I see it start to set, as fast as I can, I ride my bike to the closest view possible of the sunset.  It's my time to look at everything around me, feel everything around me, and take nothing for granted.  It's also exhilarating!

Today when I was doing this, I noticed something about myself.  I got nervous every time I got close to a dead end.  Worried, that because I didn't know if there would be another road around the corner, that people might laugh at my bad directional skills.

How silly this is, yet I've clearly been trained to do this.  We all do this at points in our lives.  We don't want to be seen doing something that might look foolish, when actually, what we should feel foolish about--is the fact that we feel foolish to begin with about whatever we are doing.  Would you feel foolish doing it if you were on your own and no one else knew about it?  There comes a point where you have to realize that it doesn't MATTER what people think.  Do what makes you happy.  So many of us choose to go the safe route.  The one where we know people will not judge us.  This is often at the sacrifice of our own happiness.  Why miss out on the things that we enjoy simply because other people, usually ignorant of our intentions and quick to judge, waste their time making uninformed conclusions about us (instead of focusing on what is actually important in life--even more of a reason to not care about what those people think).  As long as we aren't harming others, it really doesn't matter one flip what others have to say about what we are doing.

The most adventurous path, the path that is right for you, is not always on the road where people travel.  You might end up in a valley staring at the sky for a while.  Or you might end up lost, or working really hard to find yourself in a better place.  Or you may take a wrong turn at a dead end.  But the last thing you should be doing is worrying what others think about it.  Make the life choices, and the little choices, that are going to make you the most happy.  You cannot base these off of what other people think of you without sacrificing some happiness along the way.  The biggest regrets are lost chances.  Do you truly regret that you chose not to achieve something you did not want to do just because other people wanted you to?  Priorities need to be rearranged... YOUR life is about YOUR happiness.  Not others.  Things you could have done to improve your life--for YOU--that you missed out on, should be your only regrets, if any.  So go for it!!

(Of course, please try to be conscious and help animals, the world, and humanity while you are at it.  Little choices count.)

The Balance of Belief Sharing, Holding Your Own, and Accepting Others

I haven't talked much about makeup in here and I'm not sure I am going to yet.  I read about makeup and find out what the very best products are for me, what the best techniques are, and I use them...and then at that point, I'm done and don't really want to elaborate on it... I already worry I wasted my time as it was.  Though I'd excitedly talk to someone in real life about what works for us or what we like, I really haven't had much interest in blogging about it.  So we will see, but it may not happen.  It's funny, I actually do get excited about those things, but I think to blog about it makes it feel as if it's something that I care a lot about, and honestly, it's not the thing I care the most about.  I am a little fascinated as to how those beauty bloggers balance spending so much time on makeup, and then are still able to motivate on what's really important in life.  I suppose because it's enjoyable and makes them money.  Something I should try.  Maybe I should make two separate blogs.


I am feeling a bit shellish today.  I know that I am a progressive person, but yesterday I posted something on a social media site that I had complete confidence in, only to wake up at 5:40 am and take it down.  It made me realize that I have a lot of learning to do.  I still have confidence in the post and would gladly keep it up if I weren't so stirred up by the idea of people might get the wrong impression of me from it.  Something I rarely ever worry about, but this was a new level for me.  Oh well.  And I'm glad those who saw it, saw it.  But it's down now, and that knot in my chest is gone, and I can go about my day without worrying about it.  C'est la vie.  I learned I'm still conquering some shyness and that I'm not the bravest person in the world.  I'll keep trying.  And it's just a dumb social media website.
If you're wondering what I posted... well, I'm not sharing that here, but it's not a big deal at all.  Secrecy tends to make things seem like a bigger deal than they are.  The nature of humanity, take something away and we want to know more about it.  Well, that doesn't mean that it is actually that important or relevant, though it was obviously interesting.  I think it'd be really stupid to make it a big deal, and that's exactly why I posted it on the social media site.  That's why I post everything I do on there.  I don't expect that same maturity level from other humans though-- I guess I need to weigh that in more often than I have been.  Sometimes, that's impossible though because I enjoy teaching people, when I feel they're open-minded enough, rather than to silently tolerate ignorance.  I guess I just need to balance out, okay, is debating this going to cause me a lot of stomach aches?  I'm human and I'm young, and I'm still not strong about everything.  Sometimes it is just nice to be quiet and listen to others and enjoy peace, whilst still holding your own, of course...I totally get that.  And many people I meet in real life aren't worth discussing these things with.  It's just nice to listen and enjoy the world around you, often, and the person around you, who may not be so open-minded but is at least different from you and can teach you something new, as I've said before.


I think what causes me the most pain is the worry that people think I am trying to start arguments when in reality I'm trying to have pleasant, depthful conversations where everyone, myself included, learns and grows.  I don't care whether it's on a dumb social media website, why waste my time being somewhere where I interact with other humans whom I care about, if I can't be real?  I don't believe in ass-kissing just because I am on the internet.  I keep it real because life is short.  Really short.  I feel like the time is flying by.  To be cautious and silent about what one is passionate about is to repress who you are.  I refuse to do that.  (Most of the time anyway.  Read on...)


Forenote:  In the work place, obviously I won't be having depthful conversations or talking about anything controversial, unless it's some sort of Opinion column in a paper, or writing novels, or something along those lines (not out of the question).  But I'll be getting paid for that.


I guess what I am trying to say here, is that there is a balance I hold when it comes to sharing my beliefs.  I choose the right times, I choose the right people, people who are open-minded and interested, and I do it when and where I feel comfortable with it.  In an instance where I choose to share, I don't back down just because someone disagrees with me, but I always try to be pleasant about it.  I think we all should do this.  Don't submit to something, just listen with an open mind and then share your belief, no matter how different it is.  If the person is closed-minded, don't waste your time sharing your opinion with them, because they won't have anything beneficial to share into the conversation.  It doesn't mean that you like what they say.  Maybe your opinions are too different for it to be worth debating because things will get firey.  Or sometimes, it's okay to just smile at someone and change the subject because frankly, they're just (hopefully momentarily) being an idiot.  I think certain people are only capable of so many different thought processes.  We just have to accept that some are not going to have mature conversations right now, or even ever in their lives.  We can't expect the standards we hold of ourselves from the people around us.  I think this is a monumental flaw that most of us carry, to an extent.  We are all so different, have different intelligence levels, and so why should our expectations of how a person should be, which really somewhat matches our capabilities (let's be honest), interfere with how nice of a time we have with them?  Sometimes people really can't help how they are and we just have to accept that.

However, that does not mean you have to hang out with someone you don't enjoy being around.  It just means you can be pleasant around them and try to make them feel good, and still totally disagree with their values.  You don't say, "I agree," when you don't agree.  Change the subject.  Go around it.  Hold your own if they confront you, in a kind manner.  Why shame or belittle someone because they can't measure up to what you want in a person?  That's not right.  Let's spread the happiness and the love!!  And then move on and go talk to who you actually want to talk to.


Just my thoughts on that, I am really tired and feel like this whole entry is so sub-par.  I may edit it later and I'll write that I have edited this entry here, at the bottom of it, if I do.

Edited at 12:50PM, 8/23/14.