The dark circles are gone from under my eyes. I noticed that Tuesday morning after I slapped on my tinted moisturizer/sunscreen, while I was wondering if I should stick with the planned Stay Home Non Slacker House Face or add the additional steps to build Warpaint Face.1 Why bother with the additional steps?
Well.
I’ve been approached about another job. Okay, since I started this new adventure, I’ve been approached about a handful of jobs, but I didn’t thank you but no thanks on this one or pass it to someone I know who is looking for work. The role is remote, not a conflict of interest with my previous employer, and as an added bonus, it’s something I’m qualified for.2 As with almost all other things these days, let’s just say that the way forward past the initial hurdle is up in the air, but I’m okay with keeping my feet on the ground and my eyes on the horizon instead of trying to track that trajectory.
How was this relevant to Tuesday? This potential employer asked me about my availability for a round two interview this past week. I offered all day Tuesday and the morning on Wednesday, adding a let me know if both of those days are impossible, and we can see if we can slot it in at another time.
So, Tuesday morning, I was staring into my makeup drawer, calculating the probabilities of “since I haven’t heard back about the round two interview, how good are the odds that I will get a text asking if I can jump on a call right now or at best in fifteen minutes?” Either option would have dramatically increased the risk that I would stab myself in the eye with a mascara wand.3 I got the concealer out from the drawer, opened it, and when I stared at myself in the bathroom mirror (which I don’t usually do unless I’m checking for chin hairs or putting on warpaint) … wow, the dark circles I usually have to spackle were gone.
I closed the concealer, dropped it back into the drawer, put on my Stay Home Non Slacker House Face lipstick color, and got on with my day.
It’s … weird about the lack of under-eye shadows. I haven’t been doing any radically different self-care since the fall, other than stopping ruminating through potential options that would keep me from having to take a career break.
I have been drinking more water. Not consistently; I’m better at it during the week, in part because I make myself a pot of herbal tea when I sit down to write on weekday mornings. According to the nutritionist4 whom I started with working on Thursday, it’s still not enough water.
In weekend news, I’ve decided we need some new artwork on the bathroom walls.
The NFCW would (and has, and does) argue that my writing every day is radical self-care. I think it’s more like planting my hands and knees into the imaginary dirt to keep myself focused on crawling forward while waiting for bureaucratic and other gears to turn and at the same time also procrastinating on doing something with my sad home office plants and getting prepared to do Actual Gardening Stuff Outside Since I Have All This Time Now, but … hey, at least it isn’t doomscrolling. Not that I even have to doomscroll anymore, because the doom is almost to the point of standing out in the road wearing a rubber mask and staring at the house like we’re supposed to open the door and invite it and its HiddenUntilTheWorstPossibleMoment friends in for Girl Scout Cookies.
Sorry, no, I have seen too many trailers for horror movies that start like that. We also don’t have any Girl Scout Cookies in the house, because, d’uh, an entire sleeve of Thin Mints goes really great with doomscrolling. Don’t Ask Me How I Know.
I didn’t hear from the potential employer on Tuesday, or at any other point this week. I might next week, or I might not. All I can do is avoid stabbing myself in the eye while staring at the horizon.
- Warpaint Face is the addition of concealer, foundation, eye shadow, mascara, and a different colored lipstick to Stay Home Non Slacker House Face. I first encountered the idea of face presets in Neal Stephenson’s Termination Shock; the Queen of the Netherlands and her aesthetician had worked some up, though I think they called them ‘looks’. Why, yes, like a Perfectly Normal Person, I get my time-saving makeup tips from science fiction novels instead of TikTok and YouTube. ↩︎
- My degree program is in data. Since I did a capstone project centered around analyzing education data, I frequently get hit up by recruiters who think I’m a teacher. It probably doesn’t help their search algorithms that I have worked for a university School of Education and multiple U.S. Department of Education projects and bounced around between entirely too many post-secondary programs as a student.
One of the largest caveats of my capstone findings was that U.S. education data can be, to put it politely, gappy. The recent gutting of our best shot at seeing the entire picture is Not Going to Make That Any Better. ↩︎ - I no longer wear eyeliner, for that reason. ↩︎
- A real one, not a chatbot/storefront. The one in PA was excellent at steering me in a better direction. However, that was, uhm, well over ten years ago, probably closer to twenty, so I wanted to get a refresher/course adjustment before I get much further down this road. My next scary milepost comes up in three years, when I’ll be the age my aunt was when she passed. ↩︎
Modus Dementi 