Welcome to the Blog: An Introductory Post :)

Dear new readers,

Welcome to 2015 and to my brand new blog, A Grad’s Guide to Glam. I’m starting out this fabulous new year by creating something I’ve been wanting to make for a while - a make-up and lifestyle blog! The last time I put anything out on the internet in blog form was two years ago, and I’ve definitely missed it. Blogging is such a cathartic way to deal with the everyday stressors of life, and I’ve always enjoyed writing. In the last year, I’ve also picked up a new passion and hobby - make-up! I decided to combine both blogging and having fun with make-up into the blog you’ve somehow managed to find today!

Hi! This is me today, the first day of January! Natural lighting inside the bedroom at my parent’s house - it’s super hazy outside because we’re having horrible, horrible winter weather which means being stuck inside all day.  

Keep reading to find out a little bit about why I started this blog, and why it’s called A Grad’s Guide to Glam!

I graduated college in May of 2014, with a Bachelors of Music in Violin Performance. I graduated magna cum laude and with honors from my school’s Honor’s College, in case you were thinking that musicians aren’t scholarly as well. However, I found myself in a bit of a bind - up until November 2013, right when graduate school applications were due in just one month, I’d been planning on getting a Master’s in Violin Performance. But I realized that while I love music, and I love playing the violin, I didn’t have the drive or the desire to continue getting degrees in it. I wanted playing violin to go back to what it had been before I started college - a hobby, a part-time job, something fun I did in my spare time, not an all-consuming full-time job without break. I know a lot of musicians who live that life and love it, but I realized that the life of a full-time musician just wasn’t for me. I made a lot of decisions that month, such as waiting a year to apply to grad schools and using a fifth year of scholarship money to stay at my university after I graduated with my bachelors to take graduate classes and figure out what grad schools I actually wanted to apply to. I still loved playing violin, and deciding to keep it as something I loved rather than my ultimate career kept me going through the rest of my senior year of college, but I still needed an outside hobby. What I discovered as that hobby? Make-up!

A picture of me, your Grad, from the day I actually graduated in May! (A few days before I cut my hair super short!) I’m wearing my first super-high-end lipstick and to date the most expensive lipstick I’ve ever bought, Dior’s classic Rouge Dior in 999, which I am absolutely in love with and save for super special occasions, like graduation! My school’s colors are red and black; the color choice seemed extremely appropriate.

By no means am I a professional make-up artist. I don’t even consider myself an expert at applying my own make-up; I'm always excited to learn more about it! But I love playing with make-up, discovering new looks and new products, and I’ve found that I don’t use make-up as a tool to hide my features but rather to enhance my natural appearance and inner beauty, as cheesy as that sounds. I don’t use it to make myself more alluring to guys or anything like that; rather, I find that I put on make-up every morning for ME. It’s a way to express myself without words or music, and it’s also really fun. I have a little bit of an obsession with eyeshadows and lipsticks, and after browsing beauty blogs regularly for the past year, I’ve decided to make one myself. It’s also an excuse to have the ridiculous amount of make-up I’ve collected over the past year, and a justification to keep buying more. 

I’m also going to use this blog as an outlet of my life - a way to keep track of my mental health and have an outlet for staying sane as I face the next year. Over the next several months I’m submitting approximately 12 graduate applications to three different Masters-type programs: programs in Music Theory, Arts Administration, and (surprisingly) Accounting. It’s been a hectic process already this year, and it’s not over yet. It’s a little scary facing the uncertainty of the next few months, let alone the entire next year. I’m applying to schools all over the country, to programs that start at various times of the year (some in the summer, some in the fall), and so I have literally no idea what the future holds. I’ll hopefully be traveling places for interviews this coming semester, but until approximately April I will have no idea what I’ll be doing with my life for the next two to three years. This, as you can probably imagine, is a little terrifying. I’m hoping that this blog is one of the things that will keep me sane during this crazy process, adding a little stability to my upcoming unpredictable life. 

So in addition to talking about make-up, I hope to post weekly life updates for those of you who are interested. I’ll be posting things about what kinds of music I’m listening to (I like all sorts of genres, not just classical), what books I’m reading, what movies I’m watching, summaries of short stories and novels I’m attempting to write. Additionally, although I really like make-up and classical music, I’m also definitely a nerd, so I may occasionally post about what my D&D and Pathfinder groups are doing, or what new Magic the Gathering cards I like. Hopefully this blog will have a little bit of everything, so if you don’t like some of the posts there will be many others to keep you entertained.

Before I finish, an actual explanation of the name: I feel like I can bring a slightly different perspective than your usual everyday beauty blogs (which I absolutely love, by the way; just trying to bring something new to the market). Hence, the Grad part of the title - this blog is by and hopefully caters to those who are busy, just out of high school or college or grad school and figuring out their next steps in life. As for guide, hopefully you dear readers find posts that you like and relate to you and help you in your own lives, whether they give you fun make-up ideas, inspire you to buy certain products, or generally just cheer you up! And as for the Glam part, my goal is to help you dear readers (and also to help myself) Glam up your life: as in, make you feel happier and more beautiful and thus more glamorous inside and out. 

Wow, that’s a lot more text than I was planning on writing! (I do love to write though, especially short stories and novels. This is my non-fiction outlet, at least.) I’m going to end this introduction here; look for more updates very soon!

Cheers to a happy 2015! 

Yours,

Julia :)