Youth Is Faster Than Your Thoughts

Once upon a time, I was a beautiful, successful lady. Everyone loved me. Everyone praised me. Everyone adored me. People dreamed of talking to me for at least a few minutes, or at least standing somewhere near me. I didn't have a single free minute.

I used to get up at five in the morning so that by eight I could finish drawing everything I needed on myself: put on makeup, creams, powder, foundation, change my eyelashes for longer ones, completely remove my eyebrows, and then draw new ones — but prettier. I had to make my lips more defined, my nails longer and brighter. My naturally straight, rebellious hair had to be curled and styled. And I didn't like the color nature had given me either, so I had to dye it.

All of this took an enormous amount of time. That is why I never had breakfast in the morning. I just ran to the office so I could light up that gray place with my beauty and my smell.

I tried not to notice that I was always terribly hungry before lunch. I tried not to notice that all the cosmetics and creams were irritating my skin. I tried not to notice that my long nails made it impossible to function normally. I had to constantly tense my fingers just to perform simple movements, and afterward my hands hurt terribly.

I tried not to notice how uncomfortable my fashionable clothes were. They dug into me, restricted my breathing, squeezed my organs. I also ignored the fact that about ninety percent of my time was spent putting the whole beautiful image on myself in the morning, and then taking it all off at home in the evening and covering myself with a completely different set of creams, preparing for another battle in which beauty would once again defeat common sense.

And so it went on for years. I spent all my time on my appearance and didn't notice time passing, my body suffering, my joints suffering, and most importantly — my brain suffering. I had no time to learn anything. No time to read. I had to look beautiful, no matter what.

Beauty and fashion defeated my brain, captured my body, and took my youth hostage.

And then everything collapsed at once. First, my body finally gave up after all the torture from creams, hairspray, perfume, and breakfast deprivation. My body simply refused to live like that anymore. So I ended up in the hospital.

When I got out, I looked very different. But I tried to squeeze myself back into that young image of the woman who went to work every day and filled the office with beauty and fragrance. That attempt sent me back to the hospital.

When I came out again, I discovered that someone else was already working in my place. She was just as beautiful as I used to be — but she was still fresh, unbroken, and untouched by years of cosmetics and fashion. Nobody needed my services anymore. And I was unemployed.

It was shocking!

So I immediately pulled myself together. For my next job interview, I created such a powerful image of myself that halfway through the interview my body once again refused to wear it.

But that was only half the problem. My body was betraying me — the very beautiful body that had once made me so valuable in the office. And now it no longer wanted to help me.

The second problem was my brain. There was almost nothing inside it. Apart from trends, diet schedules, workout plans, and the names of creams, there was basically nothing. I didn't even know where my liver was. Or my stomach, which had been complaining about me for years.

I simply couldn't find a new job. Because it turned out that while my appearance had been working hard, my brain had been suffering from a serious lack of information. My head was full of pride in my appearance, happiness about how beautiful and fashionable I was, and absolutely nothing else.

But apparently the brain doesn't need creams and hairspray, no matter how generously you cover your face and head with them. It needs information. Knowledge. Books. And apparently you are supposed to torture yourself not with hunger and painfully tight jeans, but with difficult books.

It turned out I wasn't supposed to worry about keeping wrinkles off my face. I was supposed to make sure my brain had plenty of them. Lots of them.

Unfortunately, what I had achieved was exactly the opposite. The perfectly smooth surface of my brain became a perfect reflection of the perfectly smooth surface of my face.

I couldn't answer even simple questions. I couldn't make a sentence longer than five words. I couldn't remember the names of the companies where I had interviews.

After a year of looking for work, I ran out of money. First I stopped having enough money for creams and makeup. But I found a solution. I started eating even less. Then I sold my car. That gave me enough money for another couple of months of cosmetics and hospital treatment after my body got exhausted from the cosmetics again.

Then I sold my beautiful house — the one I had practically earned with my beauty — and moved into a tiny apartment. Still no job. By then I was no longer as beautiful. Not as fragrant. Not as fashionable.

And then I understood everything.

I decided to throw all my remaining strength into my brain. I started trying so hard to think that I actually fainted. My head resisted. It hurt constantly. But I thought that was because wrinkles were beginning to form inside my brain. After all, when I looked in the mirror, I could see clear evidence of the process happening on my face.

It turned out my head hurt because I wasn't eating enough, wasn't sleeping enough, and was watching too many educational videos about new careers.

So first I decided to become a programmer. I checked how much programmers were earning and immediately decided that this was the only possible career for me.

And it looked so easy! You watch video lessons. Everything is so simple. Everything is so clear. And best of all — you don't actually have to do anything. Nobody even makes you think. Nobody makes you solve problems.

Unlike those horrible, stupid, painful books, where there are always instructions like: "Open the program. Compile the code." But my beautiful laptop had no programs. And no code! Everything on it was beautiful. Beautiful wallpaper. Beautiful icons.

Video lessons, on the other hand, were a real discovery. I spent weeks watching programming videos. After one month of watching them, I decided I was ready for a job interview.

I was amazing. Honestly, I was fantastic. All my interviews went wonderfully. I impressed everyone. Every interview was a celebration. An unforgettable event for the interviewers.

My facts shocked them. My knowledge made their faces look so stupid and wrinkled. Their eyes became perfectly round. They constantly lost the ability to speak. Some of them couldn't even build a normal sentence.

Yes, I was simply magnificent. And yet, strangely enough, nobody hired me. Maybe they were afraid of the competition. Or something.

That was when I understood that IT wasn't for me. Programming was obviously far too easy. All those programmers interviewing me were so... limited. They couldn't even communicate properly.

So I decided to become a blogger.

That was even easier. You didn't even have to do anything. You just sit in front of a camera all day and tell people what you're doing at home. How you make the bed. How you clean. How you put on makeup. How you make those disgusting smoothies and porridges that are supposedly designed to restore your health.

What exactly they restore was never clear to me. They only ever restored one thing: my desire to die of boredom.

I talked about everything. How my day was going. How I couldn't find a job. How unhappy I was. But also how strong I was!

At first, things went well. The views gave me a little money. But then the views started going down. People became less interested in my truly fascinating life.

As for the comments, they never made me happy. So I simply turned them off. Why read what jealous people wrote? Why ruin my mood when all they had to say was stupid nonsense about my brain and my lifestyle?

Then I started filming unboxing videos. I unboxed everything. Soap. A vacuum cleaner box. A bag of bread. I even showed people how I unwrapped a sunflower seed from its shell. And how I took peas out of a pod.

But the views were still low. So I switched to cryptocurrency advice. Which cryptocurrency to buy. Where to buy it. How much to buy. And when.

And one beautiful day, someone knocked on my door. Apparently they were my biggest fans. My most grateful viewers. They invited me to go for a drive in the forest.

Very sweet of them. I just wasn't quite sure why they put me in the trunk. And when we arrived in the forest, they decided to bury me. For some reason.

Oh, those fans and admirers...

After I got tired of staying underground — it was dark, cramped, and there wasn't enough air — I decided that enough was enough.

And that was exactly when some survival blogger dug me up.

After I managed to bring him around after he fainted, apparently from the shock of my extraordinary beauty, he ran away. Very fast. I mean, unbelievably fast. Such speed! He must have been rushing to find me again so he could subscribe to my channel.

Anyway, I decided to make videos about surviving in the forest.

At first, I survived from 10:00 a.m. to 10:15 a.m. There were simply too many mosquitoes to survive properly.

Later I increased my survival time. But there was another problem. My beautiful dress kept getting attacked by bushes and tree branches. They were obviously jealous. And high heels made moving through the forest rather difficult.

When I finally reached four hours of survival in the woods, I loved it! All day in the fresh air. Walking around. Collecting little branches. Then finding a little house built by another survival blogger, throwing away those damn crooked, ugly little branches, and going off to grill meat with the blogger on camera.

There is always plenty of meat. So much meat. Sometimes I have the feeling that the entire film crew runs on meat alone.

And that's how I started working with them. They gave me the most important and responsible job of all: dusting and sweeping the floor.

Because apparently these survival bloggers have terrible dust allergies. Also, the garbage left behind by the construction workers who build those little forest houses must not appear on camera.

Otherwise the viewers might start to suspect...

Something.

I never quite figured out what they might suspect. Nobody ever explained it to me.

Anyway, it's a great job. I recommend it to everyone.

But you have to hurry. There are fewer and fewer forests, more and more survival bloggers, and fewer and fewer free construction crews.