This Week’s Vibezzz

Beauty¡

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SheaMoisture® African Black Soap Clarifying Mud Mask @ Target $2.24

I don’t know about you guys, but over the years I’ve heard a lot about African Black Soap and the magic it possesses when it comes to problem skin. I probably should’ve checked it out when I got a horrible stint of acne in my last year of high school, but the thought of my skin getting worse would’ve been too much to handle. I got this at Target cause it was right next to my faves Que Bella. I wouldn’t consider my skin “acne prone” anymore since Acutane, but I do still have the remains of what used to be awful skin that I wouldn’t mind some help in clearing up. I can’t say if it has any amazing powers (since I only just used it), but definitely smells good and made my skin uber soft. 

Maybelline® Lash Sensational Mascara(Waterproof) @ Target $6.99

When buying mascara at Target, one needs to stay on her toes and READ LABELS. I, did not, and it resulted in a wonderful mistake when I bought waterproof mascara. This stuff is amazing! My lashes stay up all day with no clumps! This is an especially amazing feat because my lashes are straight as they come.Yes, it can be slightly annoying to get off, but I just use some coco butter and its G-O-N-E. (i mean peep them lashes ya’ll)

Style¿

Qupid Studded booties on Amazon $34.99

I am living for these booties. The detail and the buckle are just so cute and I’m a sucker for grey stuff (don’t ask me why). Fall is coming up fast so grab ya some.

Foodies¡

Organic Coconut Dark Chocolate Granola @ Target $3.29

I love granola. I’ve read all the dumb crap that’s like Oh don’t eat too much of it!!!! It’s really not that good for you!!!! Screw you, man. I love cereal and this is my healthy version of it. I also added these amazing almonds for more crunch and raspberries cause those are just awesome in general. Don’t let the haters tell you its not good for you. You don’t need that kind of negativity. 

Fitness¡¿

15 Minute Fat Burning Workout Sarah’s day on YouTube

Ya’ll!!!!!! Ya girl finally did another fat burning workout video!!!! and its only 15 minutes!!!! It is seriously killer. I feel like she made this one harder than normal which I love (kinda). As usual, this works your entire body, but its super quick and I like to play weird raver techno when I do it (but low cause I workout early af). Enjoy!!

Entertainment¡

The Bold Type on Freeform

When I first saw this commercial earlier in the summer I was like ew barf Freeform trying to be “progressive” yawn, but this show is actually really good??? I’m a little partial because I love New York, but its really a fantastic show about women in their 20s and the shit I feel like we all go through. Also, their outfits are to die for in every episode. 

I Feel It Still by Portugal. The Man

This song feeds into my love for bops that have weird lyrics and I love this one. It came on at work once and I “upped” it on our Pandora so you know its good (and now it plays all the time to my delight and fear cause I’m gonna get sick of it). Definitely worth a listen if you like 80s stuff. 

Spplllluuurrrrgggeeee™

Clarisonic Facial Brush @ Clarisonic.com $169

I have been using this brush for like 8???? years I think and I swear nothing gets makeup off better or makes my face feel cleaner. When I don’t have it while traveling I freak out and wash my face twice lol. You gotta replace the brush every month (honestly who really does that cause not my ass), but I’ve never had to replace it! Super good investment.

 

Un-success of the week√

ALRIGHT I am about to just give up on self-tanners and let myself be ugly and pale cause these are annoying me. This thing is like a clear mist that goes on clear so you have no idea where you be puttin it, which is horrible. Then it’s like No need to rub it in!!! I’m like sweet! less work! well look at my fricken hand!!! and those weird circles are on my legs too just fyi. so yeah definitely gonna rub this crap in. Something I will say about it is it doesn’t come off on my stuff and doesn’t just wash off in the shower. So yeah. Being pale is hard. 

 

“Katie watched a video and now she wants to be a Vegan”-My Mom

 

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“Ain’t no money in the cure, the money’s in the medicine…that’s how a drug dealer makes his money, on the comeback.” -Chris Rock

I decided to watch something ~informative~ this past week (mostly because I finished a show and didn’t wanna start a new one) and thought this would be a good one just so that I could be more aware of what I eat and how it effects me. What I was unprepared for, however, was for it to scare me off meat, cheese and EGGS! YES, EGGS- the thing I eat literally all the time!! Here’s a few things it claimed (backed by some doctors and video evidence) that scared the literal crap out of me and made me seriously think about becoming a vegan:

• Eggs are not actually healthy because chickens are so tightly packed in cages that they are sometimes chilling next to their dead chicken friends (therefore the eggs that come out of them are contaminated with the grossness)
• Meat is not the only way to get a lot of protein (this might be a “duh” but I didn’t know that honestly).
• Huge “health” charities and informational places like the American Heart Association and Susan G. Komen get funding from meat and dairy providers in order to promote the shit (like putting their promotional material on yogurt) that causes the diseases they are trying to prevent like heart disease and cancer.
• Also fish ain’t healthy either cause they eat all the #trash we put in the ocean and then we eat their plastic ingested bodies
• Milk is not made for humans to drink therefore it is stupid for us to be drinking it (kinda already knew this from another source but there ya go)
• Gorillas don’t eat meat????? and they’re buff af. Also their teeth are shaped exactly like ours so we’re made to be plant eaters (our canines are too small to rip through meat unlike dogs and cats)
• This awful pig farm in North Carolina (or South Carolina literally can never remember which one they’re the same) sprays their grass with pig poop right next to peoples homes and then literally feeds their pigs with it (their own poop)
• This alleged farm is also the cause of many people’s health problems? Considering the amount of poop they just fling into the air, not shocking.
• Dead pigs just sitting in a giant bucket full of other dead pigs?????? in the sun???
• Pigs with pus coming out of their BODIES. LIKE A CONCERNING AMOUNT (the worst thing I saw honestly)

So basically I am shook. Not surprised, but shook. What it boils down to is people get paid to say things that aren’t true and pretend that they are, which is something we are all very familiar with as Americans. Before you throw out all of your meat or throw some shade at vegans for being so gullible, DO SOME RESEARCH. Yeah these dudes that made the film can basically claim all of this stuff to be true, but they could be lying as well. THINK about what you put in your body and how it affects your health. If they make a claim as outlandish as saying eating packaged meats are as bad as cigarettes, look some crap up, see if there’s some truth to it. You really think that slimey ass meat is really that healthy? One thing that really stood out to me was when he said the food industry is always trying to confuse people. Think about how many times they go back and forth about if red wine is healthy for you, or if coffee is healthy or if bread is like crack or whatever. All the time. If you’re unsure about what’s really healthy, then you stop paying attention, which is exactly what I did. Basically the health industry makes money off of treating these diseases, so why would they want to prevent them in the first place?

Considering I barely eat carbs, being vegan would make my diet extremely limited and kinda boring cheese and chicken nuggets are life.  I have always rolled my eyes at people who were like “oh I crave nuts and berries and granola cause I’m just so healthy” and I am not that type of person. After watching this, I can’t really think of a good reason to keep eating some of this stuff other than, I like it and it tastes good. I’m not gonna lie and say I’m not selfish, but i’ve always been someone who thinks about the impact I have on the world around me. If eating less meat (notice I said less, but tbh cutting out pig meat altogether cause of that pus thing) helps out the environment in a small way and can improve my overall health? It’s definitely something worth looking into, or maybe I’m just gullible.

 

22, a Know-It-All and Stubborn AF

The hardest period in life is one’s twenties. It’s a shame because you’re your most gorgeous, and you’re physically in peak condition. But it’s actually when you’re most insecure and full of self-doubt. When you don’t know what’s going to happen, it’s frightening. -Helen Mirren 

About a year ago, I was in New York City for an internship at a Publishing company. Overall, the actual internship was relatively boring, so much of it was just sitting around waiting for someone to tell me to do something. On my lunch breaks, I would sit outside in Union Square Park every day and eat my sad fruit in a small container. I seethed with envy at all the fashionable twenty-something women with their freshly purchased salads that reeked of a ridiculously lavish disposable income (although I was simply just assuming since, hello, who the hell can afford to buy a salad every single day? in New York City???). Considering my internship paid me a big fat bowl of nada, I was forced to choose between chips or dry shampoo. Band-aids to cover the blisters from walking EVERYWHERE? I’m splurging.

As my internship was winding down in August, I was on the phone with my mother tearfully telling her how much I just wished I could stay there instead of going back to school. I assumed I was oh so ready to be done with it and couldn’t wait to be just like these girls whom I assumed had it all (and also because I had found out my scholarship would no longer be funded and had not a single clue how I was going to pay for my senior year).

Flashforward to me coming back for my last year at LSU. I can’t tell you how good it felt to be back where I could spend money and not live in a two-inch box with no one, really, to talk to. My senior year was, without a doubt, my best year at LSU. I finally felt like I had a good group of friends, I knew my shit when it came to school, and it felt like I was comfortable where I was going in my life. I told anyone who would ask where I wanted to go (New York) and what I wanted to do (Publishing). I couldn’t wait to graduate and be done with college and school work. On to the real world where there’s no homework and you get paid full-time!

Ever hear that stupid, annoying, saying that goes something like, “life happens when you’re making other plans?” My dad said that to me once after I told him my plans and I laughed in his face like I was the one who knew better. Well ha-ha to myself because life happened and things (not surprisingly) didn’t go like I thought they would. The job I thought I would have until I decided to move suddenly wasn’t scheduling me enough and I was worried about how much money I would have saved by the time I actually wanted to move. On my downtime, which was more often than I wanted, I applied to every Publishing company I could think of and for every job I thought I would even almost qualify for, to no avail. I revamped my resume three times, wrote a new cover letter (with help from my mom) and then wrote ANOTHER one, catering to each different company while also appealing to a more creative side of myself, to no avail.

As my timeline started getting pushed further and further, I took a hard, long, stressful, look at myself and what I really wanted out of life. Would it really be so awful if I didn’t go to New York? Why was I so adamant about being there? There’s a part of me that thinks staying in the South is a form of cruel and unusual torture and that only boring people stay here. I wanted more out of life than just staying in one place forever, never really moving anywhere else. I love New York and hope to maybe live there one day, but a part of me only wanted to move there to prove something to the people in my past who thought I wasn’t good enough. The other half of me put a ridiculous amount of pressure on myself to be successful immediately so it wouldn’t look like I got an English degree for nothing.

Something that I hate, hate, hate¡¡¡ about myself is my knee-jerk reaction to turn my nose up at certain things thinking I know myself completely at 22 and could never write or live in this certain place etc. I tend to lose sight of things that would make me happy because I assume immediately that I would hate them. Truth? I’m changing a lot and I’m only 22 and there’s a lot of stuff I’m trying to figure out at this weird stage in my life. This blog was inspired by my realization that I don’t actually have it all figured out, and the things I want change OFTEN. I’ve found that writing is something I actually really enjoy and it took me until now to figure that out. Who knows what the hell else I don’t know about myself! I’ve still got like 80 years left to figure it out (that sounds like a long time to live but I eat salad, like, a lot and I run like 4 times a month AT LEAST)! It’s nice to have plans for life as I still try to do, but in the meantime I’m trying to be cool with just a “pla” for my life. Maybe see where that takes me and focus more on, ya know, doing that thing I hear people talking about called being happy!