Achieving Life Goals

Amongst all the ups and downs in my life, I'd like to recognize a few accomplishments, in order to focus on the positive more than the negative. Despite a few personal problems at the moment with grades or general motivation level, I say I'm doing pretty well.

»Committed to Berkeley
Yesterday, I finally SIR'd to UC Berkeley. Though I'm still not totally obsessed with the school, I've come to terms with the fact that it is objectively the best fit for me, and I'm sure I'll grow to love it.

»Purse Clutch + Wrist Strap
I had been using a cute little purple Vera Bradley "Zip ID Case" as a wallet for a while, but it was hard to keep everything neat with so little space. All of a sudden, the thought occurred to me that one of those grey, wide clutch wallets would be perfect, before I realized that I actually did own one. My mom had bought it on a whim a few years ago, and it had just been sitting there, but now I could actually use it because I had stuff I could keep in it. Another plus is that it came with a small wrist strap, perfect to replace my lanyard on my keys. It may seem silly to include this under "achieving life goals," but it made me so happy to have had a wish and to be able to instantly satisfy it.

»Prom Dress
I went with "borrowing" a friend's dress this year. I'm actually renting it but my mom is not happy with how much she's charging for me to rent it, so I'm stressing out over how to resolve the situation. A lot of the time, good purple dresses are just so rare, that it's not worth the time and effort put into looking for one, but this one is pretty much perfect for me in every way. It's purple, has straps, not a plain fabric, and it's the perfect length with shoes on. Anyhow, I've always wanted a purple dress for prom, and now I have one! I think I'll end up secretly renting it and not telling my mom in the end, which isn't the ideal solution, but I'll also haggle with her for a more fair price because it is a little pricy for rent!

»Haircut! (apologies for bad picture quality)
Somehow, my hair had managed to grow down to my waist, so it was getting very hard to manage. I finally got to courage to cut it, and so I lopped off twelve inches of hair (that would be a solid foot!) today at Diana's house. She actually cut it for me, and it's not too bad, but I really want to change my style up a bit more (I'm still too scared to do bangs though). Hopefully I'll be dyeing it in a week or so, or maybe after graduation (I've also thought about trying the half shave, but I don't know if I'm brave enough for that yet). I'll be donating the hair to charity if they'll take it, but they might not want it because it's quite damaged just from natural sun exposure, so with this cut, at least the remaining hair looks a lot healthier.

»Buying Things for Myself

I joined the e.l.f. email list again with my new email, and they gave me a code for free shipping at $20 (normally free shipping isn't until $35) so I went ahead and used it before it expired. I went for the Essential Professional Complete Set of 12 Brushes, Studio High Definition Powder, and the Studio Lip Exfoliator. Since the goal this year is somewhere along the lines of "look better on the outside, feel better on the inside" I'm looking forward to breaking out of my comfort zone and playing with makeup and all the fun stuff. The goal to "look pretty" is a lot more complicated than I think I explained it in the initial post, so I plan to do an updated explanation along with a product review once I receive these in the mail. I've heard good things about all these products, so I'm quite excited! ◊