Despite all the recent-ish drama surrounding the future of The Ordinary, DECIEM is taking the world by storm. Here in NYC, there are now seven locations—I still remember there were only two stores around a half year ago (~March or April), when I first visited the location in SoHo. Here’s a drive-by picture of the new Upper West Side location:

I mentioned this in yesterday’s post, but I noticed a bit of jawline acne pop up a few months ago. It happened around the same time that I started using The Ordinary 100% Squalane, so I thought that might have been the culprit—but now I realize that it was probably because the double cleansing method was failing to remove all of my physical sunscreen (specifically, Australian Gold Botanical Tinted Sunscreen).

Remember the Stanford marshmallow experiment, tested kids' ability to delay gratification? I might be able to delay eating a marshmallow, but I’m definitely terrible when it comes to delaying the gratification of trying out new skincare products. Why should I patch test when I could be one day closer to glowier, smoother skin? This, of course, has backfired more than a few times. The skin along my jawline started to break out more than usual shortly after I introduced three new products…