Hello everybody!
A lot of you might be asking, “whatever happened to that girl behind graceful-hapa? Is she dead?”. First of all, it baffles me how I only post like once each year, and I apologise for that. I created this blog at first to review beauty related products, which I'm very keen on-- but at the same time I'm very lazy and I *cough*, although am not proud in admitting this, I realise my lack of commitment towards being a beauty blogger. I always have time, ALWAYS, but at the same time I also always seem to find an excuse to do other things (read: youtube & chill). I still buy makeup and skincare products, and therefore my makeup collection is also growing. In fact "too much", some may say. My siblings asked me a few times, "Nadhja, why do you need this much makeup?". My knowledge regarding the beauty industry has also improved, and I who once had at least 20 zits on my face each day, has decreased to maybe 10 a month. So overall, my skin condition has improved in the past year, with a lot of commitment and dedication poured into that.
I am still learning, I learn something new everyday. I learn from people who has more experience than me, more knowledge, more wisdom. I practice makeup a lot, and every now and then when I purchase something new, my heart sinks a little knowing that I could've review that item and post it on the net for thousands of people to see, but instead I chose not to. Makeup is my passion, and I find myself saddened sometime that I chose not to document the interesting things that I learn in my life relating to that, because I somehow feel like it's never enough. I'm pouring my heart out here, so bare with me please. I use instagram as a platform to express my creativity nowadays, and I have bared witness towards the growth of makeup as a significant part in people's life. Yes, makeup has always been around, even since before centuries-- but for the past few years, specifically around late 2014-2017, the growth is insane. Sometimes I feel like this is the era where everyone can become makeup artists. Which, by the way is a good thing. Makeup has contributed in making people "woke", they use makeup as a media to express creativity, preach self worth and self love, as a way to protest, and so much more.
But there's a part that has bugged me for a long time. This is where may self consciousness takes part, where I feel the pressure that I'm just not enough. The growth of makeup is so rapid and widespread, that sometimes I can't catch up. I'm into makeup, but it has been a huge part in my life for quite a while now that it just feels "normal" to me. What I mean is, I don't necessarily feel the hype as I used to. And I see people who at one point, my makeup was better than them (no offence), but now their skills are crazy good, and I often find myself comparing my work to them, and feel down. Even though I open instagram 2563 times a day, I might only post once a week. I wanted to make a banging eyebrow tutorial collage-picture-kinda-thing, but it's no secret now, everyone knows how to draw their eyebrows, it's something that we Indos call "di luar kepala" already. I hope I don't sound like a brat bitching about this, cause I really am not. I have first handedly felt the significant impact of makeup towards my self esteem, and I'm more than glad to know that other people out there can relate to this. If anything, I wrote this to apologise for my absence and give my readers a clear explanation on why. To sum it up, there are days where I am bummed and disappointed in myself cause I know I can do more than what I do now, but I don't.
Another thing that I'd like to address is that I will change the url from http://graceful-hapa.blogspot.hk to another url very soon, so please don't be alarmed by any changes made in the near future. I have also changed a lot of my social media handles too.
This blog would be updated soon, and I look forward to making new posts and finding the motivation to keep doing what I'm passionate about. And to my readers, thank you for putting up with the number of posts that I have. It blows my mind whenever I check the statistics on who views my blog, and for that all I can say is thank you.
This is to 2018,
Nadhia ♡
