After Thursday's post, I had a couple more thoughts about... yup, skin.
Good habits
Mediocrity has always defined my skin health - not bad, never great. I didn't do much about it for quite a long time. My unsuccessful half-efforts started in college but I persisted. Eventually, I saw results when I simultaneously retried everything that had failed on its own - sleeping on my back, keeping my hair short, using moisturizer, and so on.
This experience meant I started quarantine with some useful decade-long habits, particularly not touching my face. More broadly, I easily understood why some chronic problems are solved by doing many small things all at once rather than proactively wasting time looking for a silver bullet.
Saving face time
A few weeks ago, a friend hypothesized on video chat that masks would reduce how often people touched their own face. My reaction was likely written clear as day across my indoor face - how often do you touch your face? I've spent some time since that chat watching people in public, and I have an answer based on my observations - people touch their face quite often. I suppose the mask creates an extra layer between corona-tinged fingers and uninfected face, so I guess that's good, right?
For me, the experience of using a mask ran counter to my friend's thinking - putting on a mask meant a rare opportunity to touch my face. Of course, I know it's just one of the many small things being done all at once that keep us safe, so no problem. Plus, if everyone wears a mask, I might be slightly more likely to transfer Corona to my face, but my fingers are probably less likely to be contaminated with the virus - let's assume a positive net effect for my health.
