I am an amateur nail hobbyist?

Jul 13

I’ve been doing my nails for like…a year or so now? I used to be super addicted to Overwatch, so I could never really enjoy extra long nails because pressing down on WASD keys would feel like pressing buttons with chopsticks. Not great. Since I’ve stopped gaming as much (PC gaming anyway, I still play Slay the Spire religiously on my phone - BEST subway game ever), I’ve gotten into the hobby of growing out my nails and painting them!

It’s hard to describe what it first felt like to have longer nails. I felt way more feminine, and I’d stare at my hands a lot more and marvel at them, and that’s because it was a joy that I had previously never allotted any time to. Given that I used to play a lot of piano, which I greatly enjoyed, and violin, which I staunchly did not enjoy, as well as fence when I was in my teenage years, I always kept my nails short. I also wore contacts to boot, and I wasn’t particularly interested in stabbing my eyeballs with almond-shaped claws in order to peel them off. As a result, I never really got into the habit of preening my nails. Taking care of them is also a surprisingly time-consuming hobby and, if you’re like me and not very good at Tetris-ing objects in a compact and orderly way, space-consuming. When I first started, it took what felt like forever for the lacquer to dry, and I had to be cognizant of my nails for at least six hours and wary of what they touched. When I transitioned to using gel from regular polish, it could take up to at least three hours to do a design on a single hand. It’s a lot more work than I had anticipated!

I’m still happy I started trying this out though. Better late than never! I look back on some of it now and I’m like EUCH, what was THAT, but I think there’s something endearing about recording your early stages of any hobby or interest, and then documenting your improvement. The worse you start, the more gratifying your development is. :) I didn’t take pictures of *everything*, so I didn’t photograph my failures with polygel and whatnot (yes, it’s a whole new world and you can go deep into the nail rabbit hole). I did take pictures of some broken nails, and nails take months to grow out. I’ve realized the tragedy of breaking nail. But anyway, here is a snippet of what I’ve done. Without further adieu, here’s some of my progress!