Well look who's back. Back with deep red, curled tip, box-braids. New year, new look?

Happy new year, really. I gave a deep-dive into what my 2023 was in this YouTube video, so I won't repeat the details here but last year was kind of ghetto. It was so ghetto, I never want to go back there, which is why I'm happy to report that 2024 is off to a brisk start on my end. I rested and now I'm awake and back at living, literally and figuratively [see my success strategy for 2024 here].

Anyway, part of my 'nEw YeAR reSEt' was to change up my look a little bit, among other self care routines including nail care, skincare & home care [SUBSCRIBE to my channel so you don't miss the video].

I'm currently in that funny place in my hair journey where I feel bored and have no feelings towards my hair. One minute I want to cut it into a pixie again [remember this look?], the next week I'm fascinated with Sister Locks and think of transitioning to that, and then the next hour I'm enjoying the low-fuss of relaxed hair.

The truth is that I simply don't have the bandwidth for anything more drastic, so I went with my go-to hairstyle; braids. The shade of red I chose is bold yet understated, particularly against my complexion, while the I saw the actual style somewhere on Instagram many months ago so I saved it in my hair folder [if you're not using folders on IG, you're missing out on a very dope feature].

[Maybe I should be a red-head for the whole year? Is that even possible? I'm not dyeing my own hair though...]

I know I needed the change to revive my appearance and set me off on a year of beauty, and as of this moment, I'm happy.

Extensions - Darling big braids col.35, 2.5packs

Thank you for reading!

1/03/2024

Red Head for '24.

Beauty, Hair

I want the full buffet of love. The hope, romance, butterflies, long conversations, shared values, a united front, real partnership, the proverbial better half, all of it.

I want to go on a nice honeymoon, Thailand or cape-town would be amazing, but any nice place will do. A place where we can relax and play and be sexy and fall deeper in love and in sync. Also like a celebration of us, for a job well-done so far, because I think it’d be worth celebrating.

The kind of relationship where we’ll grow every day, as individuals and as a unit.

We’ll be responsible with our well-being and finances as a family, pursue our respective and common goals, helping each other achieve them, mapping out our own path to success, being honest and accountable to each other, raising two children (or so ?), just being cool forever.

The children will be beautiful and well-adjusted and charismatic and smart and conscientious and curious and talented.

Our home will be beautiful, minimalist (I would simply die if I ever married a hoarding maximalist), lots of natural brightness, expensive art and lots of warmth. As soft a life as we can manage together, hopefully spanning more than one geographies, God willing.

We’d have friends, I might become obsessed with aesthetics and maybe even cosmetic surgery (not likely to happen, I’m just saying), our lives could look very different from what we imagine, but we’ll laugh a lot and have God with us. It'll be good and we'll be good people.

It’s going to be glorious.

Anyway, I just felt pushed to write today. Obviously, I’m not trained or anything so pardon my bad form, I just hope that you get what I try to say with these ramblings, and that it makes you feel something. Anything.

I have a lot of these thoughts ever so often, you know? Thoughts about what my future would look like, what I'm feeling, many thoughts. Sometimes I make a short entry in my notepad or tweet a condensed version on my Twitter, maybe talk to a friend if I can manage, and that’d be it, but there's nothing like a fully-written, long-form, straight from the heart blog post, right?

[Gen Zs and co. won’t believe this but there was a time when BLOGS like this were the thing to be on. Pre-TikTok AD.

The engagement, comments and links, ‘professional’ blog photos, blogspot .com, it was revolutionary, so much so that it birthed ‘visual’ platforms like Instagram.

Bloggers were the tin gods of the internet, they had actual writing skills and had the power to do and undo with just a few strikes of their keyboards. Yes, keyboards as in a computer, mobile wasn’t quite in yet.

They had the editorial overloads shook. It was mind-blowing, you just had to be there.]

I’ve digressed, but these are my musings from this morning, sappy like a puppy but I hope you liked reading it, if you did read to this point.

This sudden suspension of my blogger retirement was partially triggered by this twitter thread I saw this morning about lab-grown versus ‘naturally mined’ gemstones (see it here). It got me thinking about the details of the love and life that I want. That visualization kept expanding and expanding and crystallizing in my mind, and here we are with me documenting my desires on the internets.

It might be oversharing (for me at least) but I think this is like that wishing-on-a-coin-at-the-water-fountain thing but like, in the digital universe.

I’m ‘writing the vision and making it plain’, as the bible advises we do.

Now, about gemstones and rings, my thoughts and taste have galloped down a long road over the years. I started from not knowing or wearing any jewelry at all through childhood, then getting hooked into fashion magazines and style content in my late teens and early adulthood, stumbling across the jewelry business and eventually starting my own (follow and shop my brand here), all alongside growing into my own person, understanding my minimalism and deciphering what I like.

For example, in engagement/wedding rings, I know I'd like one if I make into such a committed relationship. I know I like gold. Silver is not preferred. Stainless steel is ok on the more affordable end. Tinted metals like rose-gold are a no. Colored stones over ‘clear’ ones (except yellow diamonds which are just stunning), oval shape, brushed yellow-gold band of reasonable width and so forth.

Also, by gemstones I mean lab grown, not ‘naturally mined’. Both are nearly same in molecular properties but lab processed pieces are way more affordable and without the blood.

Expending high levels of energy required for the processing, is a much lesser evil compared to the crimes against humanity that the mining industry is rife with, in my opinion.

Anyway, my romantic musings continue, I’ll keep visualizing and working for all that I want, because why not?

chat later.