Pivot!

AI made this and I'm a little offended that it gave me such a gigantic head.

Yes, the title of this post is a Friends reference — bonus points to anyone who picked that up. Extra bonus points to those who won't judge me because I've *lowers voice* never actually seen a full episode of Friends.

I know. Awful. But in my defense, I also never listened to New Kids on the Block like every self-respecting tween of the late '80s and early '90s, so you just can't rely on my taste in pop culture I guess. I have seen the iconic "pivot" clip with the couch, though, so the reference isn't just a shot in the dark.

Anyway, the point is, that's exactly what I'm trying to do. (No, not get a couch up the stairs — if that were the case, I have a houseful of strapping young lads who would grudgingly help while griping the entire time gladly assist me.) I'm trying to pivot career-wise. And y'all? It's weird.

I've been writing about my kids, and parenting in general, for-freaking-ever. In fact, I guess you could say it's been my main focus since I started this blog in 2009. It led to my actual career. But while I find this candid, personal essay-type writing fulfilling, that hasn't been what paid the bills. Readers of the sites I wrote and edited for started wanting what's called service-driven content: articles that gave them information on parenting, not insight and reflection. Sometimes I was able to combine the two a little bit (like in this piece I wrote for SheKnows — "Parents of Teenagers: It's Not Just Your Kid" — which I still love). But for the most part, I started finding the parenting topics I was covering to be dry and joyless. Ew. 

I really felt like my layoff (see here if you wanna read about it) was kind of a cosmic kick in the pants, nudging me in a different direction. I have always loved writing too much to suddenly find it sucking the life out of me, so maybe this was my chance to start creating content around something else I love. Right? 

... RIGHT?!

If you've been with me for a while, you know what a sucker an enthusiast I am when it comes to anything beauty-related. (See here for some DIY beauty tips; here for an unhinged makeup rant in which I use the term "procrasti-pooping" in reference to my husband; or here for the absolutely cringe-worthy tale of how I accidentally got about a bazillion chia seeds stuck in my hair in the name of beauty. Yes, really.) I'm a nerd who reads the ingredient lists on my products and gets sucked down Reddit rabbit-holes about affordable dupes and such. My dream job? BEAUTY EDITOR. Always has been, actually; I just sorta got roped into a different category early on.

Unfortunately, the job market isn't exactly teeming with beauty editor positions at the moment – and especially not remote beauty editor positions. No one is beating down my door with offers (the only people beating down my door are the endless DoorDashers that my kids summon to the house AS I'M LITERALLY COOKING DINNER, but that's a whole other post). 

Yesterday I put myself out there on LinkedIn, which feels a lot like slipping a note to your junior high crush and then dying inside until you hear back. I basically wrote a post that was like, "Hey, I wanna write about and/or review beauty products so if you know of anyone hiring, holla" only a smidge more professional (because LinkedIn). I even paid $20 to boost it as an ad *slowly melts into a puddle of embarrassment* so more people would see it. So far, nothing has happened aside from a handful of "likes" and an uncomfortable feeling that maybe I made myself look desperate, because anxiety is just how I roll.

I don't want to be an influencer. Gushing to the camera about products I'm lowkey trying to sell ("OMG YOU GUYS, I AM OBSESSED!") is not my style. I swear every other post on my TikTok FYP is a video like this and it drives me crazy. I literally just want to try out products and then give my honest assessment of whether they work — because that's what I myself am looking for when I'm out there scrolling. I don't want a 20-year-old with firm 20-year-old skin and glossy 20-year-old hair selling me an anti-aging product. I want to see products road-tested by people my age. By people who look at themselves in the mirror and pull up the sagging skin on their face and fantasize about a deep plane facelift that looks as good as Kris Jenner's and then realize they don't have Kris Jenner money and will have to settle for some sort of moisturizer. I want to discover things that will make me look less like a dehydrated and wrinkling old hag. 

Does anyone pay people to do this? Yes. Do I know how to get someone to pay me to do this? No.

So here I am. Just a girl, standing (metaphorically) in front of the internet, asking it to give me a job testing out beauty products to see whether they'll work for The Olds. 

Hey, weirder things have happened. 

... Like those chia seeds I mentioned earlier. Don't ever try that.