Goal Eleven: Take care of my skin

All in all, I have pretty good skin, but I don’t do much to take care of it, and it shows.  Sometimes I even do things that damage my skin, and that shows, too.

I’ve often thought about how great my skin would look if I would just do a little daily maintenance with it and stop doing the things that harm it.  Since I don’t like going out in the summer, sun damage has never been an issue, so that’s one thing I’ve already got going for me.  But that doesn’t mean that I can get away with things like not moisturising or not exfoliating.  It’s embarrassing to wear skimpy clothes in the summer when your skin looks scaly, especially if you’re as light-skinned as I am.

I also have some issues with dermatillomania, which is an anxiety disorder that causes a person to harm their own skin.  For most people who suffer from this disorder, dermatillomania manifests in face picking, but in my case I tend to destroy the cuticles around my fingernails, often pulling them back to the point of bleeding if I’m particularly worried or nervous about something.  I’m aware that this is not a skin condition in itself, but rather a psychological one, and that in order for things to get better on that front, I need to treat the source and not the symptoms.  Luckily, I have some other goals on this list that will help me do exactly that, but I’m also aware it’s going to be a more long-term road than just sixteen weeks.  Nonetheless, this is how I’m going to begin.