GYST: To Know Is To Learn

Ever since I declared that I needed to get my sh*t together, I have been trying to wrap my mind around what that means to me exactly. Now I've set my intention, I have to figure out all the pesky details, because as much as I love it as a life motto "Be like Beyoncé" is just not specific enough. 

Truth is, I haven't got a clue what it means to me to have my sh*t together. Well, I do in a way since otherwise I wouldn't feel the need to "get it together" in the first place, but at the same time, it is a very vague notion in my mind, and as we all know, when it comes to sorting out your life, vague is bad. I can't achieve something if a) I don't know what it is that I am aiming towards and b) I don't know the steps that are needed in order for me to get there. 

I do know however, that like with most things in life, there isn't one, all-encompassing answer. Not only do we all have differing ideas as to what a person who has their sh*t together looks like, there's the the fact that there are different areas in our own individual life that need to be addressed. For example, I would say that I have got my sh*t together when it comes to sleeping, and I don't mean the number of hours I spend in bed, but rather the quality. Thanks to the Sleep Cycle Alarm Clock, I can track my sleep, and make changes to ensure that the average 6-7 hours I spend in bed are the best (plus it wakes you up in your lightest sleep phase before the alarm goes off so you don't have a shock awakening in the middle of a deep juicy dream - I highly recommend!). 

It's a shame that I have yet to reach that level of quality in other areas of my life. 

The thing is, I didn't know about the Sleep Cycle Alarm Clock until Tasha Green mentioned it in one of her favourites videos; I learned about it, figured out how to use it, and then used that to improve an area of my life that at the time didn't realise was really important for my overall health. I'm not entirely sure what other specific areas that I need to improve or how or where to start so I'm going to start by learning. The only way to know something you didn't know before is to learn about it, and thankfully for me, there are countless books, blogs, videos and other resources available authored by people who might provide me with ideas. 

So that's what I'm going to: I'm going to hit Google and search for books that might seem helpful, discover blogs on various topics that seem applicable to me, find videos by people who are going or have gone through similar things. I'm going to do as much research as I can so that I am armed and prepared to make the necessary changes. 

You know what they say: to get one's sh*t together, one must first know what that sh*t is. 

Do you have any books, blogs, resources that have inspired you to get your life in order? I would love to hear any recommendations!

OILY SKIN SAVIOURS | 3 Make Up Products You Need In Your Make Up Bag

I don't know what your skin likes to do for fun but mine likes to produce excess oil leaving me with enough shine on my T-Zone area to safely guide sailors back to shore. Since I'm a killjoy, I like to find products that will stop my skin's oil-slick impersonations and give me at very least of couple of hours with nice, matte skin. When I find products that work well for me, I hold on tight and use them religiously until my skin rebels and goes back to doing its oily thang. Right now, my skin stays matte throughout most of the day and it's thanks to these three products: 

THE PRIMER | The Body Shop Instablur™

I love, love, love this primer. I've already raved about it in this blog post, and will rave about it forever, and by forever I mean until it breaks me out or I find a better primer, but for now it is my go-to. If you have oily skin, you need this in your life because it not only primes your skin for make up and lengthens the its staying power, it also smooths out your skin, minimising the look of blemishes and large pores. On a lazy day I just smooth this on, fill in my brows and I'm good to go.

THE POWDER | L'Oréal Paris Nude Magic BB Powder

All the benefits of BB cream but with none of the oiliness that tends to accompany them in a nice compact powder that you can apply directly for a light-to-medium coverage or use to set your liquid foundations - in other words, perfect. I didn't realise this is what I had been looking for until I found this. I've written more about it in this post here, but all you really need to know is: mattifying, beautifying, gorgeous velvet finish. (Just make sure to build it up slowly or the only word you'll think when you look in the mirror is cakey, and not the good kind).

THE FIXING SPRAY | KIKO Milano Make Up Fixer 

If I had to describe this in one sentence it would be: a super-affordable make up fixing spray that sets all your hard work into place without irritating your skin. It has become a beauty essential in my make up bag as a finishing touch just to extend the life of the mattifying effect of my products (check out this post for a full review). On an average day at university, my make up is done by 5.30am and I don't get back in until 6pm, and with the make up fixer, I know I don't need to worry about my make up during that time.

Have you tried any of these? Do you have a make up product you cannot live without?

REVIEW: KIKO | Make Up Fixer

If your skin is on the oilier side, you will have no doubt experienced the phenomenon of make up either sliding off your face or simply disappearing so that by the end of the day, you look very little like the fresh-faced beauty you did in the morning. Primers help a tremendous amount, but sometimes you just need that little extra help to keep everything all in place: enter KIKO Milano Make Up Fixer, the fragrance-free fixing spray that's about to become your make up best friend. 

Before this, I had never tried a make up fixing spray. I'd seen countless Youtubers finishing off their make up looks with either the Urban Decay De-Slick or the Mac Prep + Prime Fix + but given the price tags of these products, I was hardly going to go out and get them without being sure it was a product I'd even get much use out of. So when I spotted the KIKO Make Up Fixer at just €7.90, I knew I had to give it a try - and it has not disappointed.

The first couple of times I used this were more practice runs to perfect my aim (spraying something on your face with your eyes closed whilst holding it roughly 20cm away isn't something that comes naturally to me), but even from the first patchy applications, I noticed a massive difference in the staying power of my make up. Everything just stays relatively put - and matte. One of my pet peeves is mattifying products only remaining mattifying for a couple of hours before my skin wins out - the KIKO Make Up fixer helps the make up last that much longer in the battle against the shine. 

I just love this little beauty: thanks to the Chamomile in this product it's gentle on the skin and feels quite cooling, it's hypoallergenic so it hasn't broken me out and I am really happy that it's fragrance-free. After the initial cosmetic alcohol smell which is quite sharp, it fades away and you forget you even sprayed this bad boy until you look at yourself in the mirror in the evening and are amazed that you still have make up on your face. (Well, I'm amazed anyway).

I highly recommend this if you've been meaning to try fixing sprays but don't want it to leave a gaping hole in your bank balance or if you have oily skin - you need this in your make up bag. 

Have you tried make up fixing sprays? Do you have a favourite?

REVIEW: 'Damned' by Chuck Palahniuk

"According to my wristwatch I've been dead for three months, two weeks, five days and seventeen hours. Subtract that from infinity and you get some idea why loads of doomed souls abandon all hope."

Meet Madison Spencer, the thirteen year old narrator of 'Damned' by Chuck Palahniuk, who takes you with her on a journey of self-discovery as she finds herself wandering around the depths of Hell after a marijuana overdose. At first glance, 'Damned' seems like a coming-of-age story that borrows satirically from our coming of age favourites: Judy Blume's 'Are You There God, It's Me Margaret' and 'The Breakfast Club'.

It's not an easy book to get into: it took me a few months, reading a couple of pages every now and then, wondering if I'd ever progress or come to warm to this teenage girl, who's the product of rich parents who love her in your stereotypical 'we have no time to love you, and aren't quite sure if we know how, having kids seemed like the right things to do for our image' kind of way, and thinks she's a lot more clever than she actually is. At some point, I wondered if I disliked her because she's clearly what a white male author thinks a thirteen year old girl is like. Maybe it's meant to be satire. Who knows.

Luckily, the book picks up about two-thirds in, and becomes rather difficult to put down as the plot begins to thicken and point of the book starts hitting you in the face with each turn of the page (I found myself having a few 'oh, so that's what that was all about moments'), and you're getting all excited that the book is finally as interesting as the amazing covered promise and then - BAM. You fall off the edge of a cliffhanger, screaming 'DAMNIT PALAHNIUK - HOW DARE YOU MAKE IT INTO A SEQUEL' Basically, it ends much better than it starts, and the plot (and its twists), rather than the characters, leaves you wishing for more. 

On Goodreads, I gave this 4/5 stars, which was probably (definitely) too generous. Chuck Palahniuk is one of my favourite authors, so the writing itself is enjoyable, the cultural references are a nice way to give yourself brownie points when you understand them, and I think I might have let out the odd chuckle here and there, but it took me bloody ages to get into, Madison is about as annoying to read as you imagine annoying thirteen year olds to be, and once I finally got into it, it ended in a bloody cliffhanger. The chances of me rushing out to buy the sequel 'Doomed', are currently very low.

Overall, I give this 3/5 stars, and would recommend it to people who like their fiction peppered with culture references, and sitting somewhere between satire, humour, horror and 'I'm not sure if that scene was entirely appropriate'. Definitely not Palahniuk's best work, but he could do worse. 

Have you read Damned? Are you a Chuck Palahniuk fan?

3 things I hold to be true about feminism | #Fembruary

Over on doitfortheirony, Jacky made February #fembruary, a month for opening up the discussion about feminism in a casual, conversational environment, which is something that isn't always easy given the stigma that comes with openly declaring yourself feminist or simply taking a feminist stance on certain issues. Feminism is something that has become important to me over the past couple of years, and I would have kicked myself if I didn't join in. Today I want to share with you, three things that I hold to be true about feminism (emphasis on the I).

|| Feminists are not born, they are made || 

This may seem self-evident but you'd be surprised at how prevalent the assumption is that some people are just born thinking that men and women should have equal rights, and whilst others are just born thinking that men are inherently better, and that's the way it's always been, and that's the way it's always going to be. No, that's the result of a patriarchal society, a society in which the men hold the primary power and predominate in all areas of society. You might have noticed that whilst women are told to 'stay in the kitchen', male chefs dominate the restaurant industry or how (some) male politicians try and regulate female reproductive systems whilst doing nothing to regulate their own - all of that, and more, is the manifestation of the patriarchy.

We're all born into patriarchal societies (with the exception of a few remote tribes here and there) so the only way to be a feminist, is to educate yourself and become one. Even a person who is born to the most open-minded, feminist, equality-orientated parents will only go so far in their thinking if they don't read up on feminist issues, find out what the problem is, where the problem even came from and explores for themselves what the solutions could be. That's why feminism is for everyone - there are no class barriers, no financial brackets: just information about the world in waiting to be discovered and understood, and in most cases, changed. 

|| Education is the greatest weapon against the patriarchy || 

I recently came to the realisation that education is a necessary prerequisite to feminism. Education world-wide for men and women of all levels of society is necessary for the understanding that equality between both sexes is important. The patriarchy thrives on men and women being uneducated, and therefore ignorant. It tells a man that he is better than his female counterpart, that he is stronger, superior and deserving of more, and that should a woman try and raise herself up to his level, she is wrong, she is to be laughed at, she is to be put in her place. Without at the very least primary, or even secondary education, it is difficult to see how a man would question this - why he would give up this power that was given to him, why he would allow his position to be taken away without much, and often violent, resistance. Similarly, how are we to expect an uneducated woman who has been raised and taught all of her life that she is inferior, that her place in life is in relation of the men around her, this is how it is and this is how it is always going to be, to question the only thing she has ever known?

It is not mere coincidence that the feminist movement is often seen as a middle-class one, because it is often they who are educated to the degree of being able to question what is around them and say "Don't you think there's something wrong here?". Though that is not to say at all that only middle-class educated women can be feminists.

|| There is no one-size fits all feminism || 

I am sick and tired of the attempts to clump everyone who identifies as feminist into one category, whether positive or negative: there is no single, all-encompassing, feminism. That's ridiculous. Yes, there is the common denominator that feminism is the belief that men and women should be regarded as equal and have equal rights. However, when it comes to specific issues, context becomes extremely important, to the point where you could argue that each individual person has their own feminism. A black woman and a white woman will not have had the same life experiences, nor will a Christian woman or a Muslim woman; someone born into poverty will have had different struggles to those born into money (and the latter's struggles are no less valid) as will someone who is born into Indian culture or someone born into North American culture. What feminism looks like to different groups of people will look completely different. Even my sister and I, having been pretty much raised the same, because of the differences in friendship groups and education systems, find ourselves with different views on what feminism means to us. The same applies for male feminists - men who want equality for the women in their different societies, cultures, races and religions will be faced with different challenges. And all these differences do not take away from the fact that they are all feminists.

This is also known as 'intersectional feminism' but sometimes I find it's easier to boil it down to: there is no one-size fits all feminism. The differences in people conceptions of feminism doesn't mean that anything is wrong with feminism itself. There is no one-size fits all religion or political system, so why does feminism have to be any different?

What are some things you hold to be true about feminism?