Building a Body of Work | Industry Musings

Social media has a memory problem and the more I got sucked into the algorithm (I have both installed and uninstalled TikTok no less than ten times), the more it was giving me a memory problem. I was forgetting who I am, what I've done, what's ahead of me and, most importantly, what feels true to me and fulfilling artistically.

Not in some dramatic, existential crisis kind of way.

More in the sense that I was spending so much time focused on what was next, what obligations I needed to fulfill, what I was or wasn't booking, that I stopped paying attention to what I'd already built.

I've always loved writing. I started a LiveJournal account during my senior year of high school. I was there for the beginning of social media and have watched platforms and trends come and go for more than twenty-five years. I've been writing on this blog on and off since I left the makeup industry and started doing nails professionally in 2019.

What really sent me down this rabbit hole was updating the bio on my website.

Can I just say, writing your own bio is the worst.

I'd written it early in my career, shortly after signing with my agency. At the time, I'd only done a handful of high-profile jobs and was really trying to make a meal out of it. I was trying to prove to myself that I belonged.

After falling into an administrative haze while updating my website, it hit me. I was digging through my archive of images I had uploaded to my site (because everything needs ALT TEXT now) and blog posts when I started stumbling across work I'd completely forgotten about.

Editorials. Campaigns. Videos. Manicures. Blog posts.

Pieces of a career I'd spent years building but somehow wasn't spending much time looking at.

Projects I was proud of. Not because they went viral. Because they meant something to me.

What struck me wasn't that I'd done these things. I knew I'd done them. What struck me was how completely they'd disappeared from my day-to-day awareness. Not because the work wasn't important. Because I'd become so accustomed to moving on to the next thing, completing the next task. Rinse and repeat.

The beauty industry changes quickly. Social media changes even faster. Every platform rewards novelty. Every trend cycle convinces you that if you aren't paying attention, you're being left behind.

Looking back at years of work reminded me that relevance and growth are not one and the same.

I'd forgotten how valuable it can be to revisit your own archive.

What I've come to appreciate about this blog is that it's one of the few places online where my work exists without immediate comparison. I'm not scrolling past other creators. I'm not wondering whether a post is performing (although if you’re reading this, I’m happy you’re here). I'm not looking for a trend to follow.

Being a beauty professional is always a dance of balancing creativity and business.

But for now, I'm less interested in feeding the machine and more interested in building a body of work.

The rest, I'll figure out as I go.