Making Chemistry Fun Again – My Personal Motivation

I graduated as a chemist a while ago now and have been working professionally in the beauty industry for over 18 years – a time that has, on the one hand gone in the blink of an eye but on the other feels like an eternity.

Anyway, I just wanted to share with you the main thing that keeps me getting up and doing this day after day, week after week, year after year.  It is simple, I LOVE it.

The ‘it’ I’m talking about is chemistry, wearable chemistry.

I’m not the kind of girl who raves about a new brand of moisturiser or who wears all the new shades of lipstick or blush but I am the kind of girl who gets very excited about HOW all of this comes into being.

My whole professional world revolves around a joy of chemistry, of understanding what happens when this goes with that, of how it feels, spreads, lasts and ages.  I love the detail and never tire of learning more.

Over the last month I’ve been building a new adventure to go along with what I’m doing here. I don’t know how it is going to turn out yet or when it will happen so I’ll leave you hanging on that but what it has done is opened my eyes to the fact that for many science just isn’t fun anymore.  Since I started in the beauty industry there has been a feeling that ‘chemical’ is a dirty word and while I’ve never took that sentiment to heart I have to say I got on with it (that mentality) because that’s what was ‘in’.  However, I’m becoming increasingly angry at how little interest and understanding exists around chemistry, its beauty and functionality.  I make it my mission every day to try to put the fun, beauty and love back into this beautifully elegant science.

So my thinking and mental travelling has taken me back to somewhere around the 1930s when Art Deco was the fashion,  an art inspired by brave geometry, new lines, science, the future, inventiveness and bold discoveries.  I have gone back to a time when every little boy and girl got a chemistry set for christmas (well, not every one but you know what I mean), when making stuff didn’t involve fear, when great strides were being made in our understanding of the world and our place in it.  While there are aspects of the ‘chemical revolution’ that have had less than exciting ramifications it is the energy and ‘can do’ mindset that I’m channeling, the optimism and fun that was to be had.

And on that note I have started to re-organise my office, inspired by the labs of the early part of the 20th century in the hope that I too can channel that enthusiasm and bring the joy back to chemistry.