So now that I'm running my own independent beauty consulting business, I decided that I needed to back it up with social media. This was a natural inclination, as social media is my daytime profession. Plus, I had it worked out in my head that the more I sold online, the less legwork I would need to do in real life. So along came my alter ego, Sara at Mary Kay. She has this fancy little fan Facebook page and a Twitter handle to match. I went through and invited my friends to like the page and gave about a 10 second thought as to what to schedule onto it. Then I turned my sights onto my new Twitter persona.

I really saw Twitter as my outlet to new fans for many reasons, such as Twitter's longer history of hash tags, trending topics, and a general attitude that its not creepy to follow strangers. So I went Twitter-crazy. @SaraAtMaryKay went through and followed almost anyone talking about makeup, Mary Kay, skincare, or even just in the geographic vicinity of Richmond. Then she started retweeting like it was going out of style. Just to top it all off, she started mentioning lots of people that she whimsically decided would be interested.

Then Twitter blocked @SaraAtMaryKay.

Down went my non de plum. Thankfully, it only lasted for about an hour, and @SaraAtMaryKay was back in the game.

One may assume that after being blocked for being considered spammy, you would breathe and reign in the crazy Twitter horses. Nay. @SaraAtMaryKay continued to trek on. I had that account go through my real account and follow everyone that I thought would want to follow my makeup persona. I did a bit more retweeting, and just like that I was suspended (which means that you have to sit through several days of Twitter jail while they decide if you are allowed back on the site).

I was livid. How was I going to launch this great new endeavor if Twitter keeps taking me offline? So what if I condensed an entire day of reasonable Twitter engagement into an hour? So what if I spent my lunch hour blowing up the feeds of my followers?

Then it hit me.

Twitter is about people. No one wants to see me throwing myself at them. It was basically Twitter trying to tell me I was being desperate and needed to get my shit together. Basically I was being that drunk girl at a bar that just won't shut up so that everyone else can enjoy a bit of discourse. She just keeps blurting things out and hoping someone latches on to at least something she said, when in reality they're just rolling their eyes.

Sometimes, there can be too much enthusiasm. It's great that I wanted everyone to know I was selling markup, but I needed to direct all that emotion into digestible packages. I wouldn't want people doing that to me, so why was I doing it? Better yet, I work in social media, so how was I so deluded into thinking that this was okay?

My best answer is simply one word: enthusiasm. It's hard to gauge how much is too when you're excessively excited about something. Not everyone will want to hear about your passions 24/7. That doesn't mean they don't want to hear it, just that they want it in moderation. Keep your readers in mind and just consider: how pissed would you be if someone blew up your feed with all the content you are producing?

On the day that I was left alone in office and was tasked with compiling the components of a proposal into a succinct and elegant binder, I quite literally ran to Panera to grab a sandwich for lunch before the big push was going to happen. As I was waiting in line, cursing the skies that I happened to come during the lunch rush, this petite blond girl told me the color of my dress (coral) was very in season (the middle of a Southern Virginia summer), and complimented my skin tone (flushed and sweaty from the jog over to get a sandwich). Then she asked me to enter in for a free makeover, so naturally after the plethora of compliments I had just received, I half-assed an entry and put just my name and number in. A few weeks passed and I got a phone call from the petite blond girl telling me I won. My life at this point was nothing short of a clusterfuck. Most days I couldn't tell you which way way up, so when she asked me to give her a date and time that worked, it was a miracle that I even picked a day of the week that I was free. So then my friend and I embarked on an adventure that led me to make some very spontaneous decisions.

We rolled up a few minutes late to our free makeover, and were soon welcomed by the petite blond girl, who showered us with compliments, free drinks, and promise of cookies. Then we went into a mecca of makeup, in which she had an entire room full of product and pink, and spent about 2 hours smothering our faces in a myriad of products. By the end of the seminar and $100 later, I had somehow decided that selling makeup was going to be my new part-time job.

When I called my mother to tell her about it, she laughed.

When I called my sister to tell her about it, she laughed.

When I told a few of my close friends about it, they laughed.

Why was this new part-time job so funny? Probably because I had grown up playing sports, started wearing makeup my senior year of high school (let me clarify when I say "wearing makeup" I just mean mascara and eyeliner), and was basically a bro. So what I had never applied an entire face of makeup? And who cares that I can't put eyeshadow on myself without looking like a drag queen.

It was this reason exactly that I wanted to sell makeup (other than needing a bigger budget to maintain a somewhat reasonable lifestyle as a twenty-something respectable, yet fun, young professional). I thought that this opportunity presented itself so that I could learn how to be a lady. In order to sell makeup, I'll need to learn how to to apply makeup, as well as consult people about what to get for themselves. Surely all this pretty girl stuff will rub off on me.

Even if this is the best it's going to get, at least now I know what the difference between foundation and bronzer is.