Latest Posts by majexs03 - Page 4

Could you please make a post on how to stay fresh and put together through out the day? I always feel and look good for a while after i leave the house but the wind and weather and moving around makes me feel like a mess after a few hours and i come home looking nothing like when i left. What is your routine to maintain the way you look throughout the day?

Thanks so much💗

Hey Anon! I'm just gonna make a big list :)

Smelling amazing is the hallmark of presenting well, so I always moisturize my skin very well, apply a thin layer of perfume oil on my scent points, and douse myself in my perfume of the day. I'll also bring a travel size for touch-ups every few hours.

I keep a tin of sugar-free mints in my purse so my breath is always smelling super fresh.

I always have a small comb and brush in my purse so I can run to the bathroom and fix my hair. I also use hairspray like it's going out of style to make sure my hairstyle is maintained throughout the day.

I keep a tiny compact mirror and take a quick look at myself every hour or so to see what needs tweaking.

I've perfected my priming and setting routine to make sure my makeup stays perfectly in place for at least 12 hours.

I keep a Tide pen on me at all times.

I choose wrinkle-resistant fabrics that travel well and don't require constant ironing.

If it's windy out I'll pin my hair down while commuting to prevent flyaways

I ALWAYS have a fresh layer of lipgloss on, even if I'm not wearing any makeup.

I'm notorious for asking my friends if my hair or makeup needs fixing up.

you have got to learn how to style your hair and wigs.

I’ve been styling and making wigs, doing hair, and enjoying playing cosmetologist since I was young and I’ve found that it’s saved me so much money and gotten me so much clout within my friend groups. I’m known as the one who can do hair and I take a lot of pride in it, it’s important to know how to do something and know how to do it well and it’s important to take a lot of pride in your work. I have specialised hair, I’m not always able to find a stylist who I trust and I don’t mess around when it comes to my hair and making sure that it looks good, it can be incredibly annoying to have a mishap and have to figure out what to do last minute and it can be a nightmare to take care of wigs and buy them, below are videos on how to make your own wigs, style your wigs, dye your wigs, install your wigs, and care for your wigs so that you have hairstyles that last.

here’s the list.

beginner braid pattern for a wig install.

beginner middle part braid down tutorial.

arrogant tae swoop tutorial part one.

arrogant tae swoop tutorial part two.

full frontal install with detailed plucking.

lace frontal and closure plucking masterclass.

how to bleach, pluck, and customise a closure.

how to install an HD lace frontal for beginners.

how to tint your lace to the correct colour.

how to cut and style a blunt cut bob.

how to do a bald cap installation.

how to install a lace frontal perfectly.

how to make a closure look like a frontal.

how to create wispy bangs.

how to use a hot comb correctly.

how to dye your wig blonde.

how to pluck da fuck out of a hairline.

how to tweeze a perfect middle part.

how to do a 360 lace install with waterproof glue.

how to highlight your wig easily.

how to highlight like a pro.

beginner friendly detailed highlighting.

how to highlight with a highlighting cap.

how to dye a wig jet black.

how to dye a wig red/burgundy.

how to dye a 360 lace wig bronze.

how to dye a wig honey blonde.

how to dye a wig ash blonde.

how to dye a wig half and half.

how to dye a wig chestnut brown.

how to do bombshell curls on a wig.

how to cut layers in a wig.

how to install a frontal wig and cut layers.

how to do a wolf cut on a wig.

how to do curtain bangs with layers on a wig.

how to do voluminous layers on a wig.

how to do a roller set on a wig.

how to do a flexirod set on a wig.

how to do a middle part flexirod set on a wig.

what you need in a wig kit.

the best wig glue.

how to make a synthetic wig look natural.

how to straighten a part.

how to straighten a wig with no frizz.

how to fix a hole in your wig lace.

how to straighten a blunt cut bob.

how to make a closure wig.

how to make a flat closure wig.

how to make a closure wig using a sewing machine.

how to make a u-part wig.

how to install a u-part wig.

how to make a u-part wig for beginners.

how to make a natural part u-part wig.

how to do a flawless u-part wig install.

how to install a versatile u-part wig.

how to turn a closure wig into a u-part wig.

how to make a synthetic wig look natural.

how to customise a synthetic wig.

how to install clip-ins like a pro.

how to flawlessly blend clip-ins.

how to install clip-ins on relaxed hair.

how to install clip-ins on pressed hair.

how to install tape-in extensions.

how to blend clip-ins with relaxed hair.

how to do a frontal ponytail.

how to do a frontal high ponytail.

how to do a frontal low ponytail.

how to install a 90’s style wig. 

how to install a half up, half down swoop wig.

how to do a simple quick weave.

how to do a diy versatile quick weave.

how to do a detailed middle part quick weave.

how to do a natural quick weave with leave out.

how to do a versatile sew in with no closure.

how to do a sew in with a closure.

how to do a flawless 5x5 closure sew in.

how to do a beginner friendly closure sew in.

how to do a sew in with minimal leave out.

how to do your own natural looking sew in.

how to clean and wash your lace front wigs.

how to wash your hair underneath your wigs/sew ins.

I’ve also thought of this a lot and I can finally say that I truly believe that while the quality of the hair and the products you use are definitely extremely important, so is the technique you use. You could spend a full $1k on a wig but it wouldn’t look good unless you knew how to pluck and install it, there are plenty of really hot affordable synthetic wigs and synthetic/human hair blend wigs currently on the market, there are ways to install wigs that are simple but still end up making you look like you’re on fire, and there are wigs that are on the more expensive end that just won’t look good if you don’t know how to install them. Knowing how to do your own hair is truly an S-Tier skill, some salons and stylists are so expensive these days that it’s just not feasible to go in every week to have your hair done and it’s great to be able to do your hair whenever you want to and make it look good, you’ll end up saving so much money and exchanging only time, you can learn how to do your own styles, and you can even take all the skills you’ve learned and make a profit from them.

Ligeia.

Things I expect every woman above 17 to know.

It is not characteristic of the truth to bend itself to fit perspective. When it does so it's called illusion. The truth is the truth, take it as it is because there isn't a single thing you can do about it. It is exactly what is it, that's that. Do what you can with it and let go. It is what it is ,it will not change because you do not like it.

It is characteristic of a social species to a) bully it's weak and b) ostracize it's different (or defected). If you show weakness you will be bullied, that's that. If you are different, you will be ostracized . It's that. Back to point 1. - it is what it is. Take the truth and do something with it, as is. You can not change it.

The only thing people respect in women is beauty and power. That's it. Your brains only count when you're already rich and pretty. Your character only counts as a bonus to your looks and bank. Money. Beauty. These - then a bonus of intelligence because what's a pretty face with no brains. A pretty face can get ahead no brains like Marylin Monroe projected but a beautiful brain with no beauty will get walked over like that one nerd id in class that's painfully smart and kind and intelligent but still gets bullied and walked over. It is what it is. Take it and do with it what you can. A woman's power is her beauty and money (& intelligence. There's a reason we evolved to be smarter than them. With no brains you can get around but will be used left right center). When you level up, you start with making a crazy ton of money and being pretty. Then people will care.

Systems are innately unfair because people have different needs and it is impossible to serve everyone at the same time. It's a flaw of personality - every system out there is inconveniencing someone. Learn this now. When you still can. On the same not- there is no such thing as freedom or fairness because we have to deal with other people and one will ALWAYS have the upper hand and more power- because it is the characteristic of a social species to be hierarchical in nature. When you eat the rich someone else will replace them. When you abolish the patriarchy something else will replace it. Whoever made the rules we follow now had to change the ones that came before. A flaw of a progressive time- space reality.

It is better the devil you do not know than the angel you do. Familiarity breeds disrespect, the more time you spend with people the more disrespectful they get. Exhibit A- the family you grew up with. In conjunction with this it is important to remind you human beings are wired to assume everything they do not know as a threat- and for something to be a threat it has to be better and more powerful than you. Which is to say people that you are not familiar with automatically assume you are better than them and powerful and all that, while people that are familiar with you have you boxed and are sticking to the version of you they have the most power over because it keeps them at ease and helps them coexist with you without the risk of having you as a threat.

Human beings are animals. A survival species that has survived by elimination of competition and tearing each other apart. Like a pack of wolves they (we) unite when faced by an outside threat only to tear each other apart in the absence of one. It's not a you thing it is an animal thing. Under pressure people break . Understanding this will free you from most of your trauma, trust me. It's not a you thing & it's a survival game. You also turn into an animal under enough pressure do not act holy. Free yourself of the self centered narcissistic idea that they did it to you because you are you. They did it because we are animals and this is how we are. Let it go, it wasn't a you thing. Why drag it around. Also, it's a survival game. Learn to play it.

It is a characteristic of a social species to depend on each other for survival. No man is an island. Sigma female is just trauma announcing it's existence and going ghost is counterproductive and false, it will never work. You need people. Social skills >>>> literally every single thing out there and social politics is survival politics.

Do with this what you must.

Membership

BMAC

“When a flower doesnt bloom, you fix the environment in which it grows, not the flower.”

— Alexander Den Heijer

Claudia Schiffer, photo by Mark Hispard, Vogue, 1992

book review: Stolen focus by Johann Hari

Major learnings from this book. It basically talks about focus, why and how we’re losing it. Why can’t we pay attention anymore? Are we individuals to blame or our systems? 

There will be a time when the upper class will be extremely aware of the risks to their attention (caused by tech, social media, our current generation) and the masses, with fewer resources to resist the temptation of technology, will be manipulated more and more by their computers. 

Multitasking is a myth. What actually happens when we multitask is that we “juggle” between tasks. This results in incomplete tasks, higher error rates, less focus, less creativity and memory decreases. 

Sleep is extremely important, especially sleeping according to nature - when the sun sets and sun rises. If the whole world slept the way we are naturally programmed, we would have an economic earthquake. Our economic systems run on sleep deprived people. 

Reading online and reading print has a huge difference. Reading online creates tendencies of skimming and scanning text. This prevents our brain from focusing intently on one story at a time, which print allows you to do. You also remember and understand things from printed texts better. 

Empathy. Certain research suggests that reading fiction and novels improves empathy, because you are immersing yourself in another character’s life for a while. Empathy has played a huge role in human advancements. If a group of white people did not realise that colonisation was wrong, if men did not realise that women deserve equal rights, we would not have independent nations nor be close to gender equality today. 

There are multiple types of paying attention. Focused attention is one thing. But day dreaming and letting your mind wander with no distraction (that is, being alone with your thoughts) is equally important. Some of the most important breakthroughs in human history were because the inventors were not actively focusing on solving the problem. 

Being on social media = giving a free pass to be manipulated. No thoughts, opinions, desires that you have are original. They have all been fed into you by social media and the online world. It is by their design that we cannot focus. 

Leaked internal records of Facebook show that they are aware that their algorithms exploit the human brain’s attraction to divisiveness. 64% of people, for instance, who join extremist groups join because FB’s algorithm directly recommends too. “Our recommendation systems grow the problem.” Zuckerberg eventually terminated the unit that was studying this. 

Diet and attention. The diet we consumed today is a diet that causes regular energy spikes and energy crashes. Our food does not have the nutrients we need for our brains to function well. Our current diets actively contain chemicals that seem to act on our brains almost like drugs.  

Be careful about reading research, especially when it’s funded by the industry itself. For 40 years, the lead industry funded all the scientific research into whether it was safe, and assured the world that it was. Lead later turned out to severely stunt your ability to focus and pay attention and that you are more likely to get ADHD. 

We define success broadly as economic growth. Economies should het bigger, companies should get bigger. Growth can happen in two ways - either the companies find new markets or they persuade the existing consumers to consume more. If you can get people to eat more or to sleep less, you’ve found the source of economic growth. It results in people working overtime, not having enough time with family, friends and themselves, stress and anxiety prone, lack of sleep and bad health, etc. 

Conclusion: use precommitment to stop switching tasks, try to focus more on intrinsic motivation than extrinsic, go off social media periodically (say 1 month at a time) and then extend those breaks; everyday spend 1 hour in walking in silence (no music, conversations or people- and if this is in nature, even better) to connect with yourself, 8 hours of sleep every night, build on slow practices like yoga, cut out processed food, take your PTO!!

Any advice for how to deal with people being entitled to know your business? I'm often accused of being guarded and standoffish when really I'm just setting up boundaries. For example, I've been working towards an advanced degree for 3 years now. I have a well thought out, elaborate plan to achieve my goals. This is my business but people still get upset when they look at my life and say "you're not doing anything with your life". To them it looks like I just go to work and travel.

I say that I'm working towards something. But this never shuts them up. Then the questions "Well what is it?! What are you doing?! Do you have a plan?! Have you applied to school yet?! Have you thought about this, this, this and this?!!" They always word the questions like I'm incompetent and lack foresight. I always feel cornered when this happens, like my agency has been taken away. I usually just end up explaining my long, drawn out plan to them and I feel ran over afterwards. I've had people literally get mad and lash out when I keep details to myself. "What's with the attitude? I'm just asking a question, you don't need to give me an attitude." So it's easier to just give in.

"This is my business but people still get upset when they look at my life and say "you're not doing anything with your life". To them it looks like I just go to work and travel."

Why not just let them be upset? 70% of people who knew me in the past still think I'm broke and not doing anything with my life and I just go along with it. Let them create their own thoughts and ideas and tell them that they're absolutely right. At the end of the day what they think about you just isn't your business.

"I say that I'm working towards something. But this never shuts them up."

Unless they are someone important that you might need to use in the future, it's totally unnecessary to let them know anything at all.

"They always word the questions like I'm incompetent and lack foresight. I always feel cornered when this happens, like my agency has been taken away."

Because it is taken away. Corner them instead, let them know you're living on autopilot with no current ambitions. Like I said if they are no one important to you WHO CARES???

"So it's easier to just give in."

It's actually much much easier to let them think what they want... don't let yourself feel pressured and cave in. You can literally make up any lie and say that your focused on becoming a yoga teacher or something.... anythingggggg.

“I want to look back and say that I was alive. That I didn’t turn my back. That I tried. That I was happy.”

— Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited

#Beautytips #perfume

How do I smell nice all the time?

I am pretty sure the best compliment (okay, if not the top 5 best compliments ever) is something along the lines of ‘you smell so nice’. It inflates my ego just right and I get giddy with happiness. Smelling nice isn’t just about wearing perfume. No, it starts at the shower and ends at after when you spray your perfume. The most important key to smelling good is scent layering. Scent layering is the art of wearing different scents at any one time and it can be traced back to the Middle East. Scent layering either really intensifies the one group of fragrance you are wearing or it helps you create your own bespoke signature scent.

Scent layering starts in the shower. Its actually very simple, if you want to smell very Vanilla- use vanilla scented products, if you want to smell like flowers, use floral shower gels and lotions, if you want to smell like musk… use musk scented shower products. Old rich people love the dove unscented bar and so do I. If you don’t know in the shower what you want to smell like, use a neutral smelling soap. It truly is the best bar of soap because it doesn’t leave an overpowring smell after using it. For your vulva, water is enough. Mild soap if you want to ‘really’ clean the area but stick to the outer labia and don’t put it in you. I use the dove bar after I have been to gym or during my period and I use just water to really clean between the folds. Also change your underwear everyday please. I like to store my underwear with some scented wax tablets or scented sachets. I like to put them in all of my drawers just so my underwears and socks can smell nice.

For everyday shower, I use a loofah, silicone body brush and a muslin cloth to clean my body but every third day I go in with a coarse mitt or a silk glove and exfoiliate my skin that way.  I spend a good minute cleaning both my armpits.  Thats the only place I really sweat so I need that place to be squeaky clean with no odour. I cannot have hair there either because I hate the way armpit hair traps body odour so I wax them every-week. My favourite deodorant is the Salt of the Earth, which hands down is the beat deodorant. I don’t know what they put in it but it is magical. It works against the worst of BO; I know someone whose sweat was very unpleasant and after I have gifted one to her, both of us have been very happy. I have all the spray versions and I rotate through each one depending on what I want to smell like that day. I have a whole foot care routine which I will talk about at some other point but for foot odour, I reccomend  wearing different pairs of clean socks everyday (you should not be sharing shoes and socks). I use the same Salt of Earth deodrant on my feet and if I am going to gym then I use foot powder as well. After I come home, I like spray the insides of my shoes with a shoe deodourizer and then go wash my feet in the shower.

Carrying on, scent layering phase 2 is lotions and oils. The same rule applies, stick to the same smell group. After you start getting the hang of how perfume and smell works you can start mixing different scented lotions and perfume but until then just stick to the basic groups. I use my body serums, lotions, moisturisers and on top of all that I put my scented moisturiser on. This way I can use my body products that help with KP and dryness and still smell nice. Perfumes and especially perfume oils stay on better on moisturised skin as the oils lock onto your skin better so always make sure you put some lotion on before you spray your perfume. I also mix traditional perfume oils that I have collected from all over the Arab world to South Asia into my lotions if I am going for a more traditional smell that day.

Tip🪄: Perfume brands will actually sell scented body lotions, shower gels and even hair mists in their popular acents. The body lotions are usually much cheaper and you can totally buy just that and still smell amazing for the fraction of the cost. They are also great for people who find perfumes in general to be a but too much but still want to smell like something. For my fave perfumes I buy the entire set so I smell like my fave perfume.

Spraying the perfume is phase 3. I use perfume before I put my clothes on. There is a lot of debate on how many sprays and how many whatnots but my rule is maximum one spritz on each and every pulse point and one cloud one. As much as I love perfume I dont like being choked by it. So I am always mindful about how many sprays because your perfume should be lingering and alluring not cloaking and invasive to people’s repository system. I will do one final spritz on my hair (using a hair mist) and that is me done. 

Your home smell is very important as well. You yourself are nose blind to it, but you do smell like your house and that can affect how others view you. What you cook, how you store your clothes, how stagnant the air is in your home, it all adds up. As a South Asian, the smell of my food ending up in my clothes is inevitable. To tackle this, I am strict at having different pairs of home clothes and going out clothes. As soon as I come in, I change into loungewear and spritz my clothes with a deodourizer and fabric freshner and put them away. When I cook I am mindful to open the ventilations, open the windows and keep the doors to my closet and rooms shut and I always wear an aporn.

I like everything to smell nice and that includes my home. I light various Thai/Japanese/Tibetan incense which makes my place smell like a monastery and some bakhoor to add sultry oriental feel. My old Sudanese friend taught me how to smoke my clothes with incense and I do that a lot too. I find it imperative to have mini dehumidifiers in the corners of my shelves and closet and these hanging ones on my clothing rails and in my drawers I have these tiny ones. They are great for humid enviroments and stop mold and mildew forming on the clothes.

Daphne xoxo

Money changes things because if you get your heart broken or something fails, you’re just like it was an experience lol. It’s disappointing but oh well. Tomorrow’s another day. When you’re broke, everything is a big deal because your entire identity and life is wrapped up in one thing (like your relationship or a career or your hobbies or whatever) because you literally have nothing else so you have to force it to work.

“I just don’t want that for myself anymore” is a valid reason to stop anything.

i needed to read this today so im sharing it to all of you!!

100 Days of Nun Mode

i just want to spend the rest of this year letting things flow for once in my life and not stress over outcomes and/ or situations i have absolute no control over. just letting God guide me while i work on being the best version of me.

#study tips

How to learn a language when you don’t know where to start:

General Plan:

Weeks 1 and 2: Purpose:

Learn the fundamentals sentence construction

Learn how to spell and count

Start building a phrase stockpile with basic greetings

The Alphabet

Numbers 1 - 100

Subject Pronouns

Common Greetings

Conjugate the Two Most Important Verbs: to be and to have

Basic Definite and Indefinite Articles

Weeks 3 and 4: Purpose:

Learn essential vocabulary for the day-to-day

Start conjugating regular verbs

Days of the Week and Months of the Year

How to tell the time

How to talk about the weather

Family Vocabulary

Present Tense Conjugations Verbs

Weeks 5 and 6: Purpose:

Warm up with the last of the day-to-day vocabulary

Add more complex types of sentences to your grammar

Colours

House vocabulary

How to ask questions

Present Tense Conjugations Verbs

Forming negatives

Weeks 7 and 8: Purpose:

Learn how to navigate basic situations in a region of your target language country

Finish memorising regular conjugation rules

Food Vocabulary and Ordering at Restaurants

Money and Shopping Phrases

Present Tense Conjugations Verbs

Weeks 9 and 10: Purpose:

Start constructing descriptive and more complex sentences

Adjectives

Reflective verbs

Places vocabulary

Weeks 11 and 12: Purpose:

Add more complex descriptions to your sentences with adverbs

Wrap up vocabulary essentials

Adverbs

Parts of the body and medical vocabulary

Tips for Learning a Foreign Language:

Learning Vocabulary:

What vocabulary should I be learning?

There are hundreds of thousands of words in every language, and the large majority of them won’t be immediately relevant to you when you’re starting out.Typically, the most frequent 3000 words make up 90% of the language that a native speaker uses on any given day. Instead try to learn the most useful words in a language, and then expand outwards from there according to your needs and interests.

Choose the words you want/need to learn.

Relate them to what you already know.

Review them until they’ve reached your long-term memory.

Record them so learning is never lost.

Use them in meaningful human conversation and communication.

How should I record the vocabulary?

Learners need to see and/or hear a new word of phrase 6 to 17 times before they really know a piece of vocabulary.

Keep a careful record of new vocabulary.

Record the vocabulary in a way that is helpful to you and will ensure that you will practice the vocabulary, e.g. flashcards.

Vocabulary should be organised so that words are easier to find, e.g. alphabetically or according to topic.

Ideally when noting vocabulary you should write down not only the meaning, but the grammatical class, and example in a sentence, and where needed information about structure.

How should I practice using the vocabulary?

Look, Say, Cover, Write and Check - Use this method for learning and remembering vocabulary. This method is really good for learning spellings.

Make flashcards. Write the vocabulary on the front with the definition and examples on the back.

Draw mind maps or make visual representations of the new vocabulary groups.

Stick labels or post it notes on corresponding objects, e.g when learning kitchen vocabulary you could label items in your house.

How often should I be practising vocabulary?

A valuable technique is ‘the principle of expanding rehearsal’. This means reviewing vocabulary shortly after first learning them then at increasingly longer intervals.

Ideally, words should be reviewed:

5-10 minutes later

24 hours later

One week later

1-2 months later

6 months later

Knowing a vocabulary item well enough to use it productively means knowing:

Its written and spoken forms (spelling and pronunciation).

Its grammatical category and other grammatical information

Related words and word families, e.g. adjective, adverb, verb, noun.

Common collocations (Words that often come before or after it).

Receptive Skills: Listening and Reading

Reading is probably one of the most effective ways of building vocabulary knowledge.

Listening is also important because it occupies a big chunk of the time we spend communicating.

Tips for reading in a foreign language:

Start basic and small.  Children’s books are great practice for beginners. Don’t try to dive into a novel or newspaper too early, since it can be discouraging and time consuming if you have to look up every other word.

Read things you’ve already read in your native language. The fact that you at least know the gist of the story will help you to pick up context clues, learn new vocabulary and grammatical constructions.

Read books with their accompanying audio books. Reading a book while listening to the accompanying audio will improve your “ear training”. It will also help you to learn the pronunciation of words.

Tips for listening in a foreign language:

Watch films in your target language.

Read a book while also listening along to the audio book version.

Listen to the radio in your target language.

Watch videos online in your target language.

Activities to do to show that you’ve understood what you’ve been listening to:

Try drawing a picture of what was said.

Ask yourself some questions about it and try to answer them.

Provide a summary of what was said.

Suggest what might come next in the “story.”

Translate what was said into another language.

“Talk back” to the speaker to engage in imaginary conversation.

Productive Skills: Speaking and Writing

Tips for speaking in a foreign language:

If you can, try to speak the language every day either out loud to yourself or chat to another native speaker whether it is a colleague, a friend, a tutor or a language exchange partner. 

Write a list of topics and think about what you could say about each one. First you could write out your thoughts and then read them out loud. Look up the words you don’t know. You could also come up with questions at the end to ask someone else.

A really good way to improve your own speaking is to listen to how native speakers talk and imitate their accent, their rhythm of speech and tone of voice. Watch how their lips move and pay attention to the stressed sounds. You could watch interviews on YouTube or online news websites and pause every so often to copy what you have just heard. You could even sing along to songs sung in the target language.

Walk around the house and describe what you say. Say what you like or dislike about the room or the furniture or the decor. Talk about what you want to change.This gets you to practise every day vocabulary.

Tips for writing in a foreign language:

Practice writing in your target language. Keep it simple to start with. Beginner vocabulary and grammar concepts are generally very descriptive and concrete.

Practice writing by hand. Here are some things you can write out by hand:

Diary entries

Shopping lists

Reminders

What could I write about?

Write about your day, an interesting event, how you’re feeling, or what you’re thinking.

Make up a conversation between two people. 

Write a letter to a friend, yourself, or a celebrity. You don’t need to send it; just writing it will be helpful.

Translate a text you’ve written in your native language into your foreign language.

Write a review or a book you’ve recently read or a film you’ve recently watched.

Write Facebook statuses, Tweets or Tumblr posts (whether you post them or not will be up to you).

Write a short story or poem.

Writing is one of the hardest things to do well as a non-native speaker of a language, because there’s no room to hide. 

There are lots of ways to improve your writing ability, but they can be essentially boiled down to three key components:

Read a lot

Write a lot

Get your writing corrected

What’s the purpose of worrying when God always works things out for me

hold on a second man…

You can't mess up anything that is meant for you.

Do you have any reading recs about perfumes?

I haven’t read most of these yet— but here’s my current perfume reading list. Enjoy! I might update this with more as I move along. 

ARTICLES

‘Smell, Memory’ by Rachel Syme

‘The Ugly History of Beautiful Things: Perfume’ by Katy Kelleher 

‘In 1902, Audiences Turned Up Their Noses at the First Perfume Concert’ by Allison Meier

‘Kazimir Malevich’s Little-Known Perfume Bottle’ by Jillian Steinhauer

‘Getting a Whiff of Perfume’s Illusions’ by Sonya Vatomsky

‘LAYERS: Pushing Through the Arts to Perfume’ by Dannielle Sergent

‘Scenting Shakespeare’s Tragic Heroines: Cleopatra and Lady Macbeth’ by Lauryn Beer

‘Some Thoughts on Scent Criticism’ by Miguel Matos

‘Scent and Healing: The Transformative Power of Perfume’ by Ida Meister

‘Here’s Why Perfume Description Are Never About Smell’ by Elyse Hauser

‘Heaven Scent’ by Danielle del Sol

‘Ann Haviland, Forgotten Mastermind of the Signature Scent’ by Jessica Murphy 

‘Perfume, Power, and God’ by Arabelle Sicardi

 ‘How to Pick a Perfume When You Can’t Smell’ by Alaina Leary

‘People Are Buying This Perfume Because They Think It’s From Killing Eve’ by Rebecca Jennings

‘Meet Chandler Burr, the World’s Foremost Fragrance Expert’ by Chavie Lieber

‘Making Perfume From the Rain’ by Cynthia Barnett

‘Can Perfume Sabotage a Budding Romance?’ by Jesse Frost

‘The Scent of True Love’ by Cari Romm

‘Perfume: An Ethereal Corset Trapping Everyone in the Same Unnatural Shape’ by Kasia Cieplak-Mayr von Baldegg

The New York Times archives on Perfume

FICTION

The Song of Solomon from The Bible

Das Parfaum by Patrick Süskind

NONFICTION

Essence and Alchemy: A Natural History of Perfume by Mandy Aftel

Fragrant: The Secret Life of Scent by Mandy Aftel

Throughsmoke by Jehanne Dubrow

The Emperor of Scent: A True Story of Perfume and Obsession by Chandler Burr

The Perfect Scent: A Year Inside the Perfume Industry in Paris and New York by Chandler Burr

Dior: The Perfumes by Chandler Burr

Folio Columns 2003-2014 by Luca Turin

Perfumes: The Guide by Luca Turin

The Secret of Scent: Adventures in Perfume and the Science of Smell by Luca Turin

The Perfume Lover: A Personal History of Scent by Denyse Beaulieu

The Diary of a Nose: A Year in the Life of a Parfumeur by Jean-Claude Ellena

A Scented Palace: The Secret History of Marie Antoinette’s Perfumer by Elisabeth de Feydeau

Coming to My Senses: A Story of Perfume, Pleasure, and an Unlikely Bride by Alyssa Harad

Perfume: The Alchemy of Scent by Jean-Claude Ellena

Floating Gold: A Natural (and Unnatural) History of Ambergris by Christopher Kemp

The Foul and the Fragrant: Odor and the French Social Imagination by Alain Corbin

A Natural History of the Senses by Diane Ackerman

Fragrance: The Story of Perfume from Cleopatra to Chanel by Edwin T. Morris

Cult Perfumes: The World’s Most Exclusive Perfumeries by Tessa Williams  

The Ephemeral History of Perfume: Scent and Sense in Early Modern England by Holly Dugan

Perfume: Joy, Scandal, Sin: A Cultural History of Fragrance from 1750 to the Present by Richard Stamelman 

The Aroma of Righteousness: Scent and Seduction in Rabbinic Life and Literature by Deborah Green

Scenting Salvation: Ancient Christianity and the Olfactory Imagination by Susan Ashbrook Harvey

Scent: The Mysterious and Essential Powers of Smell by Annick Le Guérer 

Encyclopedia of the Exquisite: An Anecdotal History of Elegant Delights by Jessica Kerwin Jenkins

Aroma by by Constance Classen

Flowers and Fruit by Colette

Slowly becoming the person I should’ve been a long time ago.

I can admit when I am wrong, but I will never accept responsibility for something I didn't do. I work hard at being/staying self-aware, but I won't be projected onto. You cannot call me by any name other than my own.