Until the next time

As you may (or may not) have noticed, I haven't written in a while. From Jamaica, to coming home and realising I had to move to launching Gem Stone Love, and trying to get to grips with what is and isn't happening in my day job - I just haven't had the time.

I have been keeping up on my hair regime and I'm still making things left right and centre - most recent addition being a pomade with beeswax.

But unfortunately I'm going to have to leave blogging alone for a little while :( :( :(

I'll still be around but it will be in full Gem Stone Love capacity - you can catch me at any of the places below explaining it all like my name is Clarissa or something.

I really appreciated everyone who read and Google+ posts and I'm hoping you'll stay in touch and follow me on my new journey. This blog is staying open as there may just be room for me to return later. But until the next time...

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5 lessons I learned from a 1000 piece puzzle

About 7 years ago I bought a puzzle for £10 just to buy something. I was feeling crappy and thought the exchange of £10 for some kind of activity would make me feel better.

I didn't open the puzzle until March this year, 6 weeks ago to be exact. As part of my Realignment/Happy Empire, I cancelled my Sky subscription in October last year and pretty much only watched shows online occasionally, I then decided that my living room which is entirely steered towards the television should probably be moved around, so the TV now faces the back of my sofa leaving me with so much more living room space than I thought possible.

The question I then had was, how do I entertain my nieces when they came over for Apple Pie day? (that's a thing, we've been doing it for years - one supplies a new found apple pie and we compare it against the last one to the last bite - it's a worthwhile endeavour).
Roll up the 1000 piece puzzle that's been holding place in my suitcase for years.

I don't think it looked immediately enticing to 'play' but after a while we really got into it; when they left that night we had small handful's of sections but the pieces were high level sorted. As I now had so much living room space - still enough to leave my yoga mat out - I decided to continue the puzzle, 30 minutes here or there just to see if I could do it.

These are the 5 lessons I learned from the 1000 piece puzzle

1. Doing something to cheer me up is never as enjoyable is being happy and then doing something. I learned this quickly. I don't mean happy ecstatic, just that steady open feeling. When I tried finding pieces when I was in a bad mood, I was lucky to get 3 or 4 pieces in the space of 30 minutes, compared to a good 20 pieces in 10 minutes - I was on a role when I was in a good mood.
2. Frustration blinds you. All the way through from the beginning until maybe the day before the end, I nearly always said at some point "that piece has to be missing, I've tried everything, there aren't enough pieces left to fill that gap" I was always wrong.
3. Perspective is everything. At the beginning when I had a lot of pieces, I laid them out on the floor rather than in the box, and when I really just couldn't see anything, I shuffled the pieces around like domino's. It always helped, but not even necessarily for the piece I was looking for right then, more often that not I'd find a bunch of pieces in one go for an entirely different section.
4. The mind will go on regardless. From my knowledge of the mind, I know it doesn't like gaps, it likes to figure things out and create patterns so that it can be more efficient. I really understood this when - I would have just looked up from my book, or breakfast or dinner, or walked past to get to the tumble dryer - I'd glance down and would immediately see a piece and knew exactly where it went, I wasn't thinking about it at all, on some occasions I hadn't touched it in days. This happened with such frequency I laughed each and every time.
5. You can only do so much in a space of time and be useful. It couldn't be rushed, on some sections when it got really hard, I started to think I was just obviously dumb, that I couldn't find a piece, after all the more you do, the less pieces there are to choose from. But I wasn't dumb, I'd just been looking at it too long or was just in the wrong head space, I needed time away so that my mind could figure it out without my brain getting in the way.

It has to be said, I intellectually knew all of these things before, but the slow and steady reminder was definitely appreciated. I'll remember this time.

Protective styles - making it work for me

A minute on protective styles.
I was supposed to write about Hair oil next but I'm not really feeling it. - The topic not the oil, the oil is fabulous.

I am now learning to embrace protective styles. And I have to get a bit deep and explain why it took me so long.

I relax my hair because I like variety, there are numerous hairstyles that suit my rather strong featured face that I can do with relaxed hair. I can and did canerow my own hair for several years but I found it tiresome and really uninspiring. Also my hair wasn't very long then so that also didn't give me much room for manoeuvre unless I added hair extensions.

I understood the need for protective styles after reading The Science of Black hereafter known as(TSoB). I introduced some styles where I could but I mostly struggled because I didn't feel like I looked pretty if I didn't wear my hair down be it straight or with the use of god given flexi-rods. There I've said it out loud. I felt like I looked like a child with big canerows going to church. It didn't feel effeminate to me whatsoever. Because I'm not a big makeup wearer I felt my whole face just looked plain and invisible if I didn't have my hair to add some razamataz to it.

But now several years on and oh so many expletives towards low self esteem later, that's how I've mostly been wearing my hair since the beginning of this year. I stretch for 9 weeks and during the winter when the weather is frightful, there's not really much point in attempting to wear your hear out. But as I have restarted my journey I thought it best to really look at what I was doing again, and see if I should be doing something differently or regiment it a bit more.

Towards the end of my stretch I became very good friends with the 2 large canerows. Alternated parting on the right and left every week just in case I was pulling to hard at the temple hair. I did feel like I pulled on the hair way too much but with a lot of new growth and that weird end texture your previously relaxed hair gets when it knows it's time to re do it; I just needed to make sure everything was in place. All in all I think I'll give myself an A for effort but not for out come, the style looked good but I needed to prepare my hair MUCH more before I handled it so much. And I canerowed it fresh every morning and lightly at night.

But now with my fairly fresh hair, it's all about the flat twists. I started off doing the single twists because the texture it gives me hair really works for me and makes a simple grip at the back style effortless whilst still looking like I put effort in. But as I am useless at pinning curls on a second or third day, I had to redo all of those single twists every night, which is rather more handling than I should probably do on my fine hair. I'm not sure if flat twists are actually less handling or not but their certainly quicker. Another bonus is that with the twists, I have the choice to do them tight or puffy, very weirdly for me I'm rather enjoying the puffy, they're about an inch up off my head (that's a lot for me) and that extra length / depth / direction works with my strong jaw line. Although I did realise I needed a new set of go to everyday earrings to work with my wearing my hair up nearly all the time. I have ordered them today and I'm a little in love.

I think after all this it's about finding what works for you. I felt so pressured to do what every one else was doing that I never really gave myself a chance to enjoy my hair and my hair type for that matter with my hair length on my head crowning my lovely face.

I'm going to start enjoying my hair again, and I do expect great things from it. Just changing my product line up like I did years ago had nearly an immediate effect. Now I'm not saying I expect to have waist length hair by Christmas; but I will be expecting length that's healthy because I darn well worked for it.😍