Nails (034)

Though I have never been able to grow my nails long and healthy, I have always enjoyed the thought of making them pretty. I used to get frustrated over how quickly nail polish would chip and eventually gave up on keeping them painted for about a decade. The desire never really left, I just gave up on it because I deemed it too frustrating to try. 

About 8 years ago, a friend introduced me to some fun nail polishes from Orly and showed me a few tips to make it last longer. I eventually gave up on that too, realizing that a big problem was that my nails are too flimsy and polish doesn’t really fix that. It chipped after a day. My diet eventually got better about seven years ago, and my nails grew slightly stronger, but I didn’t pick up polish again until just shy of a year ago. 

While in lockdown, I started watching a ton more YouTube, which meant falling down rabbit holes of famous YouTubers that I just hadn’t discovered for myself. SimplyNailogical was one of those channels. Cristine is a well-rounded, fascinating person, and I loved that she shared her passion for nail polish with the world. I decided to give her new line of polishes a try after watching videos about how to make a manicure last longer and realizing that I had been doing nothing that she showed. 

Fast forward to today, my nails are garbage (who knew that eating an entire sleeve of Thin Mints for breakfast doesn’t give you proper nutrients), but I know how to work with them to get polish to last almost an entire week. Painting my nails takes a couple hours, but I use it as fun time to watch YouTube or listen to audiobooks. It’s a sort of meditative act for me, allowing me to slow down and be careful with an art that I get to show off to anyone who sees my hands. It’s part of my aesthetic now. I can be as creative as I want, and I get to enjoy my creation for many days before starting over.