I've had a realisation...

This past year has been one of the most amazing but also one of the most difficult of my entire life. I've spent months battling loneliness whilst all my friends were off having fun at university (difficult), then I travelled around South East Asia for two months (amazing), came back home, worked an awful job for the summer (difficult), gone through some personal journeys (difficult) and moved city to start at one of the best universities in the country, realised I hated it and had to leave. I am now, sleeping on the sofa in my mum's house, not really knowing what I want to do with my life. I'm back working at a shop, a job that's easy but not particularly fulfilling. 

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I've been toying with the idea of training to become an accountant. I've always been good at maths and business type things. It would be something I could do with relative ease and I know I could be incredibly successful if I put my mind to it. But here's the thing, I don't want to put my mind to it. 

I saw a quote from Jim Carrey earlier today saying that 'you can fail at what you don't want, so you might as well take a chance on what you love.' I know accounting is something I don't want, but I had to spend a bit of time thinking about what I actually do want to do. And this evening, it hit me. 

I want to travel the world. I want to see amazing things. I want to meet incredible people. I want to help those in need. I want to see, do and learn everything I possibly can about this world. 

I'd always thought I wanted to stay living in London, have a successful career, a big house, a perfect husband and three perfect children at good schools. I'm only nineteen, I don't even need to think about those kinds of things, but that's all I've ever thought I wanted for most of my life. But since returning from my travels in Asia last spring, all I've thought about is getting back out there and trying something new. I see pictures on Facebook of old friends doing just that and I get such strong pangs of envy. I need to travel. It's burning up inside of me. I'm going to start saving my money to up and leave, probably some time next year, and I'm just going to do it. 

I want to take a chance on what I love. 

I'm a Sucker for Recommendations: Mini Drugstore Haul

Any time I see someone talking about a product they really like, I instantly write it down on my list of ‘Make-Up to Buy’ (which is now about 2 pages long now!). I cannot resist buying at least one of someone’s recommendations every single time I go into a Boots. And this morning, I had a job interview, so to reward myself for it going well, I bought myself a couple of items.

The first thing, or things, I picked up were the Bourjois ‘Rouge Edition Velvet’ matte lip products. If you watch a lot of beauty YouTubers or read a lot of beauty blogs, you will have probably heard a lot about these. In practically every video I’ve watched for the last week, people have been hyping about these, and with good reason. These are SO incredible, the finish is really matte and it’s not sticky at all, even though it applies like a lip gloss. They stay on really well, I noticed particularly when I was drinking from a bottle of Diet Coke after I applied it and NONE came off on the top of the bottle- amazing! I got the shades ‘Hot Pepper’ and ‘Olé Flamingo’. I have tried both and the colours are great, although I will say, the red shade did take a couple of coats to get perfect, not necessarily a bad thing, just something to think about.

I also picked up the Soap and Glory ‘Supercat’ eyeliner. This is one of the felt-tip-pen style eyeliners, which I love. I think it was Lily Pebbles that I had seen talking about it, but I’m not 100% sure. I haven’t tried it yet, but I have swatched it a couple of times and it looks like it’s going to be really good (and it was only £6, bargain!). Also, sorry the picture just won't turn around!

And the final thing that I bought was the Real Techniques ‘Expert Face Brush’. This has been around for a while, every blogger seems to use it and love it. I don’t know why I put off getting it for so long, but I finally did and it was definitely worth it! I've been using a MAC foundation brush for years, which has been great but I wanted to change it up a bit. This one is a really different shape to the ones I've used before and I think I definitely prefer it. I just use it with my liquid foundation over a primer and the finish is great. 

The POREfessional: The Primer That Converted Me

During my long-term make-up obsession, I have tried many, many primers and I have to say I have never enjoyed using any of them. I’ve always found that using a primer makes absolutely no difference to how my make-up goes on, how it looks or how long it lasts. Thus, I’ve never really bothered using one, sticking only to a little bit of Urban Decay Primer Potion on my lids if I’m going on a night-out. 

But this all changed when I found Benefit’s POREfessional. Now, this has been such a hyped up product over the last couple of years, and due to my dislike of primers, I didn’t go to any effort to try it for myself. However, in a Birchbox a couple of months ago, I received a small sample, and after one try I instantly fell in love with it, having to buy the full size practically straight away. It’s different to the primers I’ve tried before for a few reasons:

The texture: The POREfessional has this amazing air-whipped texture that I’ve never really had with any of the primers I’ve used. The texture means that it makes your face feel super soft but also has a matte feel about it (it makes me not want to put my make-up on over the top so that I can just feel my skin like that!). I don’t have a massive problem with pores on my face, and so I haven’t really been able to experience that aspect of the product, but if it’s as good as everyone says it is, it will be amazing. Another difference is that it’s not actually white, like the majority of primers, but it has a slight skin-tone tint and so it has a very natural cover as soon as you put it on.

The finish: I’ve started using the POREfessional under my make-up at basically all times as it just makes it looks so fantastic. The matte texture means that foundation can stick easily to it but not give any kind of shiny or sticky finish, which I have experienced with some other primers. Foundation looks smooth and perfectly applied in an instant, which saves you time trying to perfect it every morning/evening.

The effect: I’m the kind of person that rubs their face a lot during the day, I don’t know why, it’s just a habit to keep touching my face a lot (I know that now sounds weird, but I promise I’m not some crazy lady!), and this means that my face make-up hardly lasts any time at all. But, when I’ve used the POREfessional, my make-up has stayed stuck to my face for the whole day, practically perfect for hours. This is brilliant as it means you don’t have to keep reapplying, which saves time as well as money because you’re not using so much of your products every day.

Overall, the POREfessional is just amazing; it works perfectly in practically every way. It’s the primer that has converted me to being a primer junkie, although, I’m not sure my obsession with this product will let me try many other primers!