Making My Teenage Self Jealous

Hi, friends!

The other day, I was thinking about how annoying it is to still be dealing with acne even though I've been done with high school for five years. I always assumed that my skin would quit being rude once I wasn't a teenager anymore, but I'm still waiting. These days, I have fewer ~blemishes~ and also better tools for dealing with them, which prompted me to think about the products and useful things that I would've loved having ten years ago.

Skin stuff:

I wish I'd had hydrocolloid patches and the e.l.f. rollerball acne treatment gel. I'm not sure if either of these things were even available when I was younger, but I sure love them now!
The gel is good for run-of-the-mill acne spots. I use it before bed on any areas of my face that aren't cooperating. It is a little drying, which isn't great for someone with eczema who also lives in the desert, but it doesn't usually cause any major problems. I've noticed that acne seems to clear up faster when I use it. Things don't disappear overnight or anything, but this does help.

It's simply unfair to have wrinkles under my eyes and acne at the same time. Not much I can do to get the wrinkles to leave, but I'm doing my darndest to banish blemishes!

The patches are a more recent discovery and I use them for the more, erm, three-dimensional issues. They're honestly pretty gross if you think about it too much. They're designed to suck out the ickiness over several hours. I usually put them on as I'm getting ready for bed and peel them off in the morning, at which point the bump is much more flat and the patch has... thickened a bit. They may be sheer enough that you could wear them during the day if you wanted to, depending on what brand you get. (If they don't match your skin well enough, you can also put makeup on top of them without causing any issues!) As an added bonus, they prevent you from poking or contaminating your troubled skin.

I found this specific pack of patches at Walmart. They're magical, I tell you!

Along with things to help me make acne go away, I'm really thankful to have products that cover it while it's inconsiderately intruding on my skin. Concealer and foundation make me so much less self-conscious about my face! They also help out a lot with the darkness that I've had under my eyes for as long as I can remember.

That outfit and Barney shampoo are so very '90s. I found an eBay listing for that shampoo bottle and it says it's from 1994! I'm also from 1994, though, so I'm guessing this picture is from around 1997. I've had dark, sunken tear troughs for at least twenty years.

Makeup Revolution concealer in C1 and Colourpop concealer in Fair 02.

Fun things:

I never realized how much I love scented candles until earlier this year. I used to think they were kind of dumb, actually. They seemed expensive and I didn't like that the smell of the flame would mix with the smell of the wax. Soon after we bought our house, we went to the area in our Walmart where they have candles and I had way too much fun smelling them all. Since we use a warmer instead of actually lighting the candles, there's no fire smell!

Obviously, having a smartphone would've blown my mind back in the day. When I think about my first phone, my little red Samsung A737, I have to laugh. I remember being jealous of a friend's Juke phone because it seemed so fancy. And hoo boy, the famous Razr was super cool because you could take pictures of yourself without having to awkwardly hold your phone backwards or stand by a mirror! My new Galaxy S9 can shoot slo-mo video, scan my irises to unlock itself, broadcast its screen to our TV, and let me play Final Fantasy IX anywhere. How crazy is that?

Pros of A737: physical keyboard, easy to fit in a pocket, fun to slide
Pros of S9: has a headphone jack, has approximately a billion other nifty features

Another thing that came to mind while pondering this subject was the glorious software that is Steam. Steam, for those who don't know, is a platform for buying and playing computer games. I was super late to the game (ha) and didn't discover it until about four years ago. There are sales all the time and Steam will notify you when things on your wishlist are discounted. Basically, if you want to play games on a computer, this is something you need in your life.

I could go on and on about all the types of technology that would've made life better for young Lizzie (AKA Miriam), but I'll stop after just one more: Personal Progress online. The program was updated in early 2009, when I was a Mia Maid, and I think I'd already lost a Personal Progress book at that point. The ability to keep track of what you'd done online was added in late 2010. I didn't finish Personal Progress until 2012, but I had grown responsible enough to quit losing my book by the time I could've started checking things off online, so I don't think I ever bothered to use the online tracking. As a YW leader, though, I can appreciate that it's super helpful for the girls that need a little help with their organization.

This post would be incomplete if I didn't mention Oreo O's and Trix with shapes. Trix stopped having shapes in 2006 and Oreo O's became unavailable outside of South Korea in 2007. Oreo O's finally came back to life in 2017 and my beloved Trix have recently stopped being boring spheres.

"Real" Oreo O's didn't come back until there was already a fake version available. I think I might be partially responsible for the "high sales" that convinced Nabisco and Post to bring the real stuff back.

Of course, legitimate Oreo O's don't come in enormous bags, so I still buy the fake version.

The world may be getting progressively scarier as time goes on, but there are still a lot of things that are continuing to improve! It's important to look for things to be happy about, and writing this was a fun way of doing that. If you can think of other things I should've included, let me know!

Love,
Lizzie