You know what always makes me feel better?  Success.  Succeeding, getting rewarded, being formally recognized.  Getting a job, getting an internship, getting an unexpected scholarship, getting a good grade (made all the better when other people didn’t get a good grade).  Feeling myself move forward.  Towards what, I don’t really know.  More success?  Faster, easier to access success?  And until what?  Until I’m universally known as a success?

Anyway, I don’t know about all that.  But for the time being, I know that success is the only thing guaranteed to pick me up.  This time last year, I was named a Deans Scholar, found out I’d gotten into Trinity, got an internship I thought I had no chance at, and became an official staff member for The Heights.  It was great, and whenever those things would happen I’d thank my lucky stars at night.  For a while I thought, okay, I am successful, I have so many things happening, and yet I am still sad.  Why am I still sad?  And I decided it was because I was missing a Someone to share those things with, which is something I’ve written about at length:

…I have this crazy idea that every person should have a Someone they can always talk to. I am also sad because I may have missed my opportunity at a Someone by a day and a half, even though probably nothing would have happened (why would it? guys don’t make passes at girls with glasses), but the almost-there possibility is driving me crazy inside–I’d talk to someone about it if there were a Someone, but if there were a Someone then there’d be little else to talk about on the subject.

I couldn’t have minced my words any further then, but what I meant was that I felt that having a Someone–that person you always turn to, who is your first and for whom you are their first, whether a lover or a best friend–would erase my lingering sadness.  I would have success, I would have a Someone, and I would be happy.

Since finding a Someone, though, I’ve come to understand what everyone always says–hell, what I always tell friends after breakups: a relationship is not the key to happiness.  Which I still agree with, to an extent, but because I am human I think the rules don’t apply to me, I would say that for me it’s one of the keys.  I think that I would be different, that for me having a Someone would be the cherry on top of a very good and plentiful life, the glossy shine on my memoirs.  And maybe in another world it would be, but this one is rife with complications I just don’t know how to play out and in which no one I know can personally advise me (o hai, Atlantic Ocean!).  Everyone keeps telling me to stop anticipating how bad things will be next year, to just enjoy myself right now, but simply put, I find it hard.

So, I thought, maybe I was wrong about the whole Someone business.  Maybe that’s not what will make me a happier person, and maybe everyone’s right.  But no, no, I still feel in my heart that having a Someone is encoded in me somehow, that it’s only right for me to have one.  And since I have one, and I’m still not totally happy, then something is missing.  And that is…

Success!

I lack success here.  Aside from that first kiss and an A- on the only paper I’ve gotten back, I haven’t cheered for myself once, and neither has anyone else.  With reason: I’m not doing anything here.  I’ve found myself lying about how my day’s gone to the people I care about most, pretending that I went to class or that I sent out some resumes, because I’m afraid of them realizing that I’ve grown dormant.  I need my parents to think I’m still an amazing kid, and I need the Someone to not think I’m relying on him for happiness, and for both of these things I need to achieve something.  I’ve achieved nothing yet in 2009 in terms of personal, independent successes.  And I miss them.  Because without them, I’m not happy.  If I’m not happy, then he’s not happy.  If he’s not happy, I won’t have a Someone.  If I don’t have a Someone, and I don’t have successes, then…

Well.  Let’s not think about what bad things will happen then.  That will get us nowhere.

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If one more person tells me not to get my hopes up about something, I’ll be in the ground.  I’ve spent my entire life not expecting too much, and I’ve been miserable up until the last few years when I realized I have honest to God potential.  What’s the point of life if you’re just waiting for the other shoe to drop?

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Botanics is, by my best estimate, the Herbal Essences of the UK and Ireland, even though Herbal Essences is also sold in these stores.  Cheaper shampoos have never been the best for me, and I think I’ve tried most of them.  They tend to just get the job done without ever really adding much to my hair, which can be a bit annoying when all you want to do is blow your hair dry and be done with it.

But oh my God.

Botanics is the king of drugstore shampoos, with powers incomparable to any other.  I lather, rinse, and repeat, towel dry, apply a good helping of the conditioner, and then blow dry with a round brush.  And?

Yes, yes, more intelligent!  This shampoo is so smart that I even realized I could just take a picture over my shoulder in the mirror.  This is now my hair on a normal day.  It moves, it shines, it smells amazing, and even though I didn’t go with the specifically brunette one, I think it’s making my brown nicer.  I’m the type that has to blow my hair dry if I want it to look presentable, but the other day I was so bedridden that I just washed once, combed it, then took a three hour nap on it.  I woke up like this:

Glamorous?  By no means.  Publicly acceptable?  Yes!  I was able to go outside looking like I’d used the Surf Spray and was intentionally going for the fashionable scraggly yeah-my-shirt-is-wrinkled-what’s-it-to-you? look.  I was too stupid to be able to aim the camera correctly, but hey, one out of two ain’t bad.

I thought this hairapy mini feature would go on way longer than this.  You have no idea how many shampoos I’ve tried in the last few months, how much money I’ve spent, how many full bottles I have sitting around here.  (Seriously, does anyone want Aveda Pure Abundance?)  I thought this would never end.  Now, I’m going to go take a nap with the Botanics tucked under my pillow and wake up looking fresh as a daisy.

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I most unfortunately have begun to think like Homer Simpson without realizing it.  Of course, I have realized it now, but for too long my thoughts have usually gone something like, How can I make money without getting a job? and, If only there were some way to get money right now instead of waiting until I actually do something to merit money, and, I played poker for chips pretty well, perhaps if I raise the stakes next time?, and, If I got into an accident, what would the payout be?

Scarily, these run parallel to:

“After years of disappointment with get-rich-quick schemes, I KNOW I’m gonna get rich with this scheme… and quick!“

I should be scared by my desperation, but not yet!  Because I am still deseperate.  Do you know how much shit costs over here, not just for an American but for anyone?  A lot!  And you do know that I want to stay here for the summer, right?  And that I am having trouble drumming up the courage to tell my parents because the cost-benefit of “It will cost several thousands of dollars, but there is a possibility that I will cry less on a daily basis!” is not an impressive bulletpoint on a Why You Shouldn’t Book My Flight Home Just Yet PowerPoint?  And oh my God I had the scariest, most straightforward dream the other night where my dad stood in front of me and ripped me a new one, telling me that I was the most selfish child and was the reason there was no heat in the house and that I should go kill myself, so my four-year-old self toddled up to the roof and jumped off, and my twenty-year-old self pointed at my dead body and said, “Look at what you’ve done”?  That if I really want to stay and avoid pressure suicide, I am going to have to pull money from somewhere, and it won’t be my ass because I already spent all that on a weekend trip to Galway and Kimberley’s (nom nom nom)?

So right now I’m coming up with hair-brained schemes to make some fast cash.  I’m jealous of the postgraduates I know who can simply volunteer to teach some labs or tutorials and make a buck.  Back at BC, I could just tell the professor I freelanced for that there were some tweeks I needed to make to her website and I’d get $40 to help me get through the week.  Here, though, I am a victim of the recession.  I don’t really want a job while I’m in school, because now that I’m a bit of a social butterfly I like being available to whatever anyone has in mind.  For the summer, when there are fewer people around, yes, of course.  But for now, if I am going to do anything, I want to work from home.

My most desperate move, which you may have already noticed by scrolling down this far to read, is that I’ve added advertisements.  I never wanted to have advertisements for some purist blogger reasons (i.e. I’ve been on the blog scene for 8 or 9 years now, and the personal site scene even longer, no way will I ever taint this hobby with profit!).  But really, I’ve built websites for money, too.  Of course, I’m not a mommy blogger, so I’m not going to make the money those ladies make, and no one is going to come rapping at my door, furious that I’m exploiting myself for cash.  I’m really, really not important enough in the blogging world to even be at a stage where I employ advertisements.  (Which, as a side note, kind of makes me sad.  I was sort of hot on the Internet back in high school.  I mean, not really, but I used to have a readership outside of my friends.  It should come as no surprise that this is one of the reasons I’ve feared becoming boring as I’ve become happier–because literally, as I’ve become happier, I’ve lost readers.  Catch-22!)  Anyway, contractually I am not to encourage clicking of these advertisements, but I will say that this website has been sucking money out of me for two years now (official dot-com birthday is the 19th) and that it should really start pulling its weight.

I don’t know if the ads will be permanent–for now, I think of them as a temporary solution to a temporary problem.  They won’t be much of a solution, and I’ll probably make about $10 every year at the rate my page hits are going, but hey.  If I can put a coffee cup out on the street and someone may throw a few cents in, then why not.

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I love beauty and make-up blogs.  I love reading them and gleaning advice, knowing which women to listen to and which ones to ignore.  I like submitting questions and having them answered.  I like finding a new product I can’t live without.  I read the label obsessively and hold the bottle close to my heart when I go to sleep.

BUT THIS HAIR SHIT IS RIDICULOUS.

I figured that once I got settled into Dublin, once I got used to the water and found a working hairdryer, things would get better.  My hair would adapt and cooperate and I could go skipping off into the sunset.  But this is not so.  It is still a gamble every morning whether I will look presentable or like I haven’t showered.  So today I am starting a mini section of this website: we’re going on a hunt for NICE DUBLIN HAIR.

My current morning routine (the whole “wash your hair every other day” thing doesn’t work for people like me) is:

• Bumble and bumble’s Sunday Shampoo, meant as a weekly cleanser but now upgraded to a daily.  I either use this alone when no one’s going to see me (as it adds no oomph, merely strips out the collected crud), or before…
• Wella Color Preserve Hydrating Shampoo, even though I don’t color my hair.  It’s very light and was perfect on its own in the summer.  Nowadays if my hair just feels too heavy I use this, but it’s resulting in a very stringy appearance.
• Aveda Rosemary Mint Shampoo, simply because it was the only brand I recognized in the store.  I use this on days when I plan on curling my hair, because it is so thick that my hair barely moves once it’s dry and that way the style stays.  It smells great and might work better in the States, but here I can’t use it without first using Sunday.
• Somedays I follow with a healthy spritzing of Bumble and bumble’s Styling Lotion, which acually helps a lot for texture, although I am nearing the end of my bottle so I am holding out.
• I think everyone is familiar with Bumble and bumble’s Surf Spray by now, although it’s a tricky product to handle if your hair can easily look dirty (blondes don’t normally have this problem, I’ve noticed).  I can use it right after I’ve had a haircut and my layers are still apparent, but not at the moment.
• Pureology Root Lift if I’m feeling brave.  It works great in the States, but here, if it’s been a bad shampoo day, it may just kind of crust up.  But I can never tell if it’s a bad shampoo day until after I blowdry, so sometimes I just risk it.

Right, so, yesterday I used Sunday Shampoo with Wella, no product afterwards, and this was the result:

Okay!  Now that’s a fine looking scalp, right?  All looks well in the front up there–the part isn’t too severe from grease, everything’s falling into its right place.  BUT.  Look at the back.

Folks, that is not okay.  Look at that.  (BTW, has anyone tried to take a picture of the back of your head?  Shit’s hard.)  It looks like I did not wash my hair, in spite of all the scrubbing and sudsing I did.  There’s absolutely no shape to it, and I feel like I look the way I did in middle school when I wanted to grow my hair out long but didn’t know how to take care of it, and didn’t yet have the hormones that would keep it naturally healthy.

Today, I was in a really awful mood and was suffering from some bodily unpleasantness, so as I was in Boots Pharmacy anyway, I decided to treat myself to a new shampoo to cheer myself up.  Since I haven’t had much luck lately with really expensive brands (and since I’ve unfortunately discovered, after the fact, that you can’t return opened bottles here like you can at Sephora or Ulta), I went with the €4.99 Botanics Hair Ultra Moisturising Shampoo and the €4.99 Botanics Hair Leave-In Volumising Conditioner.  They’re cheap but they’re purportedly natural, and good GOD do they smell good.  The result:

Thicker!  Fuller!  More intelligent, even?  That might be the Glasses of Intellect influencing my opinion, but probably more intelligent.  It feels pretty nice, although I have to not touch it so much or else I know it will get greasy, as most cheap shampoos do to me.  I think the Leave-In Conditioner has the same sort of effect as the B&b Styling Lotion, just not as nice.  I also parted on the other side today because I hadn’t changed that up in a long time, so although my bangs were oddly flippy, I kind of liked them.  Back view:

Argh, I don’t get it.  What is it with the back of my head?  I shampooed twice today, did the back portions in sections and really focused the spray in there, and yet… that, that really bad texture that simply does not match the front.  It saddens me.

Whither next?  I need to get a haircut, first of all, since my lady simply didn’t cut my bangs last time (they’re usually on my cheekbones, but now they’re at my chin), and she didn’t use those texturing sheers as much as she usually does.  I like having that in the back because it kind of masks a bad hair day–plus the Surf Spray works best then.  Of course, there are about 100 salons in Dublin and no one responded to my email about recommendations (granted, one of the girls has dreadlocks), so I need to do some research there.  I’m going to keep up with the Botanics for the week and hope that my hair gets used to it in a good way.  In the meantime, what do you guys use?

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