Last week, I celebrated my first anniversary at the first on-staff job I’ve had in nearly half a decade — five years when I was sure I’d grown too feral and unruly and corporate-cynical to ever be hired by anyone ever again. Though I still write creatively and make podcasts on the side, I’m technically a “senior beauty editor” during the day.
In a year when my mental health hasn’t always been the most stable, this job has been a boon, an ongoing source of comfort and safety. I’m paid well and I’m respected and I’m essentially given a wide berth to do (within reason) whatever I want. I’ve been working long enough to understand that steady paychecks don’t get much better than this.
But I’m also having — and this is new for me, job-wise — fun? And I’ve learned a lot, both about the beauty industry and my own vanity, how I feel about my aging face and what I’m willing to do about it, especially as I’m offered treatments and products I could never afford in real life.
Landing this job took months of thought and planning (you can hear more about my over-50 job search in last week’s Everything Is Fine episode). It was frankly much harder than I thought it would be.
If you’re in a post-50 job hunt, know that there’s hope in finding the right thing for you — it might just take mustering patience, confidence and a bit of imaginative thinking along the way.
But in the meantime, I’ve spent a year uncovering the mother lode of “worth it” beauty products. Here are some.
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