Be Real in a World of Perception

Normally I don’t watch other spas, I believe you should do you own thing so well that you don’t care what anybody else is doing. I didn’t set out on this path I am currently on I just wanted to practise my trade and avoid the noise. Life had different plans for me as I watched my home and the business, the very essence of me, burn in flames in the wee hours of the morning. I thought I’d bounce back from this one, push forth with determination. Only this time my fate was in someone else’s hands. I couldn’t work longer or harder to achieve more favourable results. A true victim of circumstance, and we all know what they say about idol hands. Pampered Aesthetics would take on new forms as we developed our own line of skin care products that aligned with our morals. My husband kept asking me what I wanted to do, what made me happy. I couldn’t honestly answer this. I knew I couldn’t lose the spark I needed to shift focus somehow. My younger self wanted to be a published author; I knew my commitment issues with my scattered thoughts that a book wasn’t currently achievable. I have always enjoyed writing. In my profession, I have extensive knowledge, and a lot of educating to do and the statistics show that most do no read long posts on social media. Thus, the Pampered Aesthetics blog was born, a creative outlet for myself, while education about my products and service offerings as well as the multitude of health benefits and myth busting. I will be the first to admit I just started writing. Unless you are specifically searching for it, we don’t even appear on the google search. This is something I would like to adjust I started googling beauty bloggers to see where I could adjust. I quickly saw I am nothing like those girls. Now don’t get me wrong I’ve always been different. But here I am looking at completely polished, flawlessly put together individuals on polished white backgrounds. I realized I am out of my league, I will never be that. As I am carrying our diapered dog in one arm, juggling my phone, a pad of paper and a pen in the other, telling my son its way past his bedtime and that he left another tripping hazard disaster at the top of the stairs that was going to kill somebody. My mum bun game is strong, sitting on the very top of my head with a not so attractive cotton nightgown on. The dogs are misbehaving and driving me crazy, I am exhausted but have some quiet hours…I need to get some work done. The bags are pretty permanent anymore, and I’ve been not using the copious amounts of makeup my younger self once did to hide my skin. This is my life. Who am I to break into this what seems to be elite spot for opinions? My husband being his supportive self reminded me I wasn’t alone, there were other women out there juggling a circus that might have an interest in what I have to say, and if not then at least he reads my blog posts. A bold-faced lie sir. We started this adventure with him proof reading, my brain after the fire is sometimes jumbled at best. But his editing time frames don’t fit into my impatient self, so I started releasing them and hoping that I didn’t sound like a complete twat waffle. We/ I do not fit into the traditional beauty blogger category; however I am immensely passionate about the subject matter/ the content I put out there. The information is important but never mind that I love doing it. I love educating people, I feel that it is a large part of our jobs as Estheticians. We are dark and twisty here at Pampered Aesthetics, my content will never be light bright and poppy its not who we are, its in our business plan…true storey…maybe another blog post idea for the future. Our products are black labels even if it isn’t the industry standard and it was met with resistance along the way. Even our manufacturer didn’t want to do black labels, trying to get us to go in the direction of black font on clear labels. The end goal is black bottles to go with the labels. We stayed true to ourselves and our brand, it’s so important in this ever-changing world. The world where one is constantly comparing themselves to others on social media. Completely unhealthy for everybody involved, including the charlatans. We live in a day and age where we compare our worst days to someone else’s highlight reels and wonder why we are not holding up to the impossibly high standard we have for ourselves. Sometimes we must be more forgiving of ourselves and allow ourselves to show up as we are……snacks in hand. Who knows. I have never claimed to know what I am doing, and I most certainly don’t have the algorithm down pat, but I show up every day and learn as I go, I better myself. Hell, I’m putting content and thoughts out there I never would have even a year ago. It’s not easy being the black sheep of the industry, hopefully one day it’ll be worth it, until that day my children are watching and I want them to see Mum being her authentic self, not a watered-down version to be more digestible in business and in life. We let our freak flag fly and sometimes it’s okay to be different if this sounds like something that is you make sure to hit the subscribe button and hopefully you can find inspiration in us to do what makes you completely happy and fulfilled. -Jess