Is time on my side?

It's a well known fact that I have time on my hands. Yes, for the first time in my life I have endless stretches of unaccounted for seconds, minutes and even hours. (I certainly hope none of my editors are reading this or they'll know what's truly at the root of my missed deadlines.) But by virtue of the fact that freelance writing allows for very flexible hours, I can do things like meet friends for lunch, sit by the pool or take a long afternoon run without compromising my job.

But apparently I'm not dedicating enough of my free time to my skincare regime. The lovely folks at Dermalogica recently invited me to a media event where we were given a personalized step-by-step beauty routine. It was very informative and opened me up to a few new offerings from Dermalogica, which is a brand I really love and believe in. It even taught me, a seasoned beauty vet, a new few tricks. But like a best friend on the road to her wedding day, it simply demands too much of my free time. To follow the Dermalogica philosophy, I would be expected to: pre-cleanse, cleanse, exfoliate, tone, moisturize, re-moisturize with SPF and apply eye cream. And do it all over again at night.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm very religious with my skincare, just like I am with flossing. It's very important to me that I continue to be carded at the liquor store, asked what grade I'm going into, when my mommy will be home, where the Hello Kitty section is or barring any of those, hit on by men six to ten years my junior. In short, I don't wanna look old. But tacking an extra ten minutes onto my pre- and post-bed skincare routine? Oh sure, now that I've written it down, "ten minutes" hardly seems unreasonable. Kind of like when I was a youngster in Catholic school being admonished for not attending church every week. Once my teacher pointed out that at the end of the day, "God is really only asking for one hour out of my week" for some good ol' worshipping, it seemed perfectly doable to me. But I still never went to church.

The good news, dear reader(s), is that I've matured since then and I've started to incorporate some of the Dermalogica steps into my daily skincare routine. For one thing, I'm using a special night cream and a whitening solution and a weekly facial mask. I'm exfoliating every other day and being really careful to make sure there's SPF on my face at all times. The flip side is I've also become even more obsessed with looking for wrinkles and pulling my skin back from my temples and tapping the underneath of my chin with the back of my hand. I am, in essence, acting out the same scene that thirtysomething women have been acting out on screen since the dawn of talkies. I'm one of them now.

So I no longer look at those extra ten minutes in the morning and ten minutes at night as cutting into my busy schedule of lunching, lounging and writing. If anything, they're buying me even more time.