#2: Aries Season, Genius Moisturizer, Too Old for TikTok
Welcome to the second instalment of Party of Three, where I share three random things or thoughts each week (maybe!). Thank you for being here.
Time to stir shit up? 🥳
It is Aries season. I hope this new astrological year finds you well. I am not too well versed on planetary placements or anything horoscope-related tbh, but all this talk about the Aries spirit — new beginnings, boldness, courage on one side, impulsivity on the flip side — is getting me pretty hyped.
I am entering this period with a huge sigh of relief because it feels like finally there is hope. Real hope. Hope that may just materialize, the kind of hope that isn’t mere figure of speech. Personally, the feeling is “warmed up”, maybe even “ready to see where things go”. The year is stretched out ahead of me and my head’s buzzing with curiosity. That’s always a good start, right? Do I feel mildly threatened by this random bout of positivity? Absolutely. After all, what is joy if not a precursor to great disappointment? But! I am choosing to see this as a much-deserved break from the weird aftertaste of what has been a rather funky Q1 (a cursed period that reeks of new year hangover and unmet expectations). Today, right now, the feeling is very much like I am almost myself again.
Things that made me feel hopeful recently:
Reorganizing my phone’s homescreen display. Now I get to see new emails (in my personal address) in realtime without having to refresh or launch the app. I weirdly love seeing names of strangers whose newsletters I am subscribed to appear on my screen. Gives the pathetic illusion that we’re actually friends~
Switching things up in my skincare routine. Trying new a new essence and a new cleanser. I didn’t know how much I needed the sense of novelty to get me excited about my face again.
Writing this newsletter. Not gonna lie writing is still the worst, lol, but it has also been fun.
Genius skincare 🤯
Moisturizers are mysterious creatures. They are every where, every brand will not shut up about how good they are for your skin, and yet good ones are incredibly hard to come by. In this city of hellish heat and humidity, all I want is a moisturizer that isn’t too thick to do its job, one that I wouldn’t have to wipe off my face the second I step outside because it simply refuses to sink in.
Enter Laneige’s Cream Skin Refiner. Not that this is new (if I remember the hype correctly, I think it was released in 2019?), I just wanted to gush for a minute. The genius of this product is that it isn’t cream — at least not at first. Per the brand’s website, the Cream Skin Refiner is supposed to be both a toner and moisturizer in a single product, which personally sounds pretty true to my experience with it. Straight out of the bottle, it is this extremely light milky water that immediately melts into this soft creamy texture upon contact with the skin, and dries up quickly without leaving any residue. It is so light and watery that Laneige later repackaged it into a face mist — the exact same product, but with a spray applicator — which I love even more for two reasons: first is that it gives me full control over the amount of product I apply on my face, second is that it has completely changed my moisturizing game, in the sense than now I actually have a moisturizing game.
P.S. As mentioned in the first segment, I also recently started using the face cleanser version of this product, a.k.a. the mouthful Cream Skin Milk Oil Cleanser. While I’m tempted to write love notes about that too, maybe I’ll save it for the next time I feel like pretending I’m a beauty writer.
Thirty on Tiktok 🙃
Avi sent me this the other day and when I tell you I couldn’t stop laughing... 🥺 😂 😭 One can follow as many people above the age of 28 as possible on TikTok, one may even abstain from dance TikTok, engage solely with, say, cooking TikTok or some other TikTok subculture that isn’t so centered around teenagers, and still feel like you’re “too old for this”, in the way people become too old for pensi. Finding your corner doesn’t change the app’s demographic.
And yet! Idk, I like to think it doesn’t actually mean you are too old for this; you’re simply being shown a different mode of existing. I like to think it is possible to accept being older and still exist as who you are, even if that means exercising a level of self-awareness I didn’t have to have in other corners of the internet. Am I making sense?