Tragus Piercing Experience

So I've wanted my tragus done since before I got my cartilage piercing but my mom would never let me get it because she thought it was "gross." A little while ago I asked her if I could finally get it because I had the money to pay for it on my own and she said "Just wait until you're 18, then you can do whatever you want." So I waited a little bit longer until one of my friends from school texted me one night and was asking me all these questions about my cartilage piercing. Just giving her advice made me want my tragus even more. So I asked my mom that night AGAIN if I could get it pierced and she said "We'll talk about it." Without even talking about it, we went to the mall the next day and I talked her into letting me get it done. I wasn't nervous until I stepped into BJP at the South Hill Mall and then I felt sick to my stomach. I have always heard that the tragus is the most painful to get pierced but I was only comparing the pain to my cartilage which didn't hurt much for me at all. Long story short, the tragus piercing was definitely my most painful. I've had three lobe piercings in each ear, a cartilage in my right ear, and my lip and the tragus hurt the worst. A lot of people say they can hear a "pop" when the needle goes through but I wasn't really concentrating on listening to the pop, I just wanted to make it out of there consciously. The initial poke hurt badly enough, but the transfer of the jewelry hurt even more. My mom was watching and said there was a lot of blood, which tends to happen with facial/ear piercings but I didn't feel it dripping or anything, which helped ease my mind a lot. The piercing is still sore; I can't sleep on it, put headphones in, or even put the phone up to my ear without irritating it a little bit. I've been cleaning it religiously with salt water spray because I'm even more so afraid of infection since experiencing it with my lip piercing. I'm really happy with my tragus piercing and even though it hurt a lot, I'm really glad I finally did it.

Comparisons

Lately I've not only been comparing myself to people based on their appearance, but also the thing they're good at. One of my biggest passions is photography and I hope to make a career out of it in the future but recently I've just felt as though my pictures aren't as good as other peoples'. I know there will always be a better photographer than me, but these are people I know from school that also enjoy photography and just do better than me in general. Maybe it's just me because I am the biggest critic of my work, but I feel like I could improve so much and I have to if I want to be successful. I have few pictures that I'm extremely proud of and the others are just mediocre. I'm hoping that once I upgrade to the 60D it will improve the quality of my photos, but I'd really love to take classes to help me. In the mean time, I'm trying to come up with fun ideas for a photography project because I'm sick of just photographing the same cliche things that everyone already expects. I'm occasionally updating my Elizabeth Nyberg Photography page on Facebook and now that the weather is getting nicer, I hope to be updating it a lot more frequently.

Long Hair Don't Care

I GOT EXTENSIONS!!! I've wanted long hair for such a long time, but every time I grow my hair out it stops at a certain point and never grows any longer. I researched hair extensions for a good month recently and went back and forth between online companies SO MANY TIMES. YouTube is such a great place to get reviews on products you're unsure of buying because it isn't just a blog post with words that you're supposed to trust, it's a video showing you exactly what you're getting. The first company I found was called HeadKandy. After many hours of researching, I found a lot of bad reviews and a lot of good reviews, but the price was kind of steep for me. HeadKandy was on the top of my list for a while until I found another company called Foxy Locks. Foxy Locks had pretty good reviews and the price was significantly less than HeadKandy but they only had one length to choose from. Earlier in my research I found a website that I never heard of from YouTube but the extensions they were selling were the same price as Foxy Locks and came in a variety of colors and lengths. The website was called Pro Extensions but I didn't do too much research on them until I stumbled across a YouTube review on them while researching the other companies. I decided to look up more YouTube videos and all the reviews I saw were positive. For the price and length choice, I was pretty sold on Pro Extensions. I chose the 20" off black 100% Remy human hair from Pro Extensions and I'm really happy with them. One concern I had from watching a bunch of YouTube videos on them was that they weren't going to be much longer than my real hair, but once I got them they were actually longer than I expected. In the picture above, I have them curled so that takes off about three inches and I feel like they look more natural that way. I'm also thinking about dip dying them turquoise for summer, but I don't want to ruin them. In short, I love these hair extensions!!

Photography Challenge Day Three: Clouds

DISCLAIMER: THIS IS NOT MY PHOTO. I'm just putting this here since I haven't gotten the chance to take my own picture of "clouds" and I really want to move on with the photography challenge.