A Refresh & Thoughts on the Future

Hi! It’s been a while – I know! There’s a fresh new look here on Logical Harmony that I am SO excited about. I wanted to take some time to reintroduce myself, talk about where I’ve been, my thoughts on cruelty-free as a whole, and future content here on Logical Harmony.

As you may or may not know, I’m Tashina I’ve been running Logical Harmony for well over a decade as a cruelty-free resource. A lot of you have been around for a long time. Thank you for still being here! If you’re new – welcome! It’s nice to meet you! A lot has changed in that time on Logical Harmony, in life, in the cruelty-free space, and in the world. But my passion for cruelty-free beauty and hope for a world without animal testing remains strong.

I appreciate your patience in this process. It’s something I needed to do. And now I’m back!

Let’s dig into the past…

I’ve taken a break from frequent fresh content for a while to focus on trying to keep the resources here up-to-date. It’s a lot of work and sometimes feels impossible if I’m being honest. With just me working on Logical Harmony, the balance has been hard to find. But I know it’s not impossible and I plan to bring back new content soon. Part of the redesign here was to remedy some technical issues that made creating new content incredibly difficult too. I’m excited about the new look (and hope you are too!) and I’m excited to share new cruelty-free resources, reviews, and more with you.

In short, I needed to take a step back. I needed to figure out what makes me happy content wise, and how Logical Harmony could keep being useful in the future. So often I didn’t feel inspired by content and felt like I was just doing a copy and paste of the same thing over, and over, and over again. I wasn’t sure what was helpful for those on their cruelty-free journey. I wanted to step back and look at the bigger picture of the beauty world and how cruelty-free fit into it.

For my own content, YouTube has taken a possibly permanent backseat and I shifted my focus to Instagram for a while. I pivoted my content there in a way that felt organic and authentic to me. I share cruelty-free makeup looks, but also a lot of fashion and some home and life too. This has been fun and was a creative outlet that I really needed. I also needed to find “me” again. As a content creator, there’s so much pressure to look and dress a certain way. It’s really easy to lose yourself in a world that says you need to look and dress a certain way to have anything that resembles success. This pivot on Instagram was a huge part of getting back to myself. I know my style isn’t for everyone, and that’s okay.

I also took time to just live life. I used to work 15+ hours a day and 6 or 7 days a week. I was exhausted, but also missing out on so much. I had just moved to New England and wanted to explore the area, make friends, and establish a work life balance for the first time in a long time.

Now let’s talk about the future…

Now that I finally am rid of the technical issues that had been making creating new content so hard, I’m really excited to get back into it. This was the first time I had help working on the look of Logical Harmony, and it was a nice change. I don’t have a team and I’m the only one making content. There’s still some changes I want to make and it’s still a work in progress, but it’s getting there!

I’ve been getting asked this a lot, so I’m just going to say that Logical Harmony will remain primarily focused on cruelty-free beauty. I also personally still only use vegan products too, so a focus on those will continue too.

Cruelty-free content you can expect to see:

• Better communication when brands become Logical Harmony Approved and added to the Cruelty-Free Brand List
• More brand cruelty-free status updates
• More cruelty-free shopping guides for stores and product types
• More vegan product lists for brands
• Cruelty-free product reviews
• Regular email list updates

Lifestyle, food, and fashion content are all coming back. I’m a spooky girl living in New England and want to share more than just makeup suggestions with you. I’m going to be peppering in this other content because I truly enjoy it and I feel like it adds a personal touch. A huge part of what originally motivated me with Logical Harmony was personal thoughts and sharing things I loved. I also feel that Logical Harmony was missing that for so long and I want to bring that back.

In regards to the cruelty-free community…

The cruelty-free space has been weird. I’ve seen so many people feel completely confused and discouraged by it. And I can understand. It’s been amazing to see positive changes to end animal testing happen, frustrating to see huge hits like what just happened in the UK where animal testing was being conducted despite being banned, and a bit more frustrating to see the biggest organizations in the space provide completely contradictory information from each other about the current state of animal testing.

Animal testing remains a nuanced issue and I think all the major groups (Cruelty-Free International, Humane Society International, Leaping Bunny, PETA) need to be sharing a lot more news, updates, and information than they do. There’s so much information and regulation that only they have access to and only they can accurately share information about. I think it’s now more important than ever to focus on these groups for information and ask them to share more.

Many have also felt that “cruelty-free” relating to just animal testing is too simple of an issue. There’s definitely so much more to explore about brands and products when it comes to their ethics. I know some other creators have stopped using the cruelty-free label, and I don’t fault them at all for this. I can see how the cruelty-free beauty landscape has been made more and more confusing. It’s good to ask questions, and to learn more. Sometimes this means stepping back, taking a pause, and seeing what matters to you.

We’re all just trying to do our best and trying to do a little better than we did before.

To wrap this up…

I’m happy to be back. I’m excited to keep sharing about cruelty-free with you, and to expand my range of content too. I hope that you’re excited too. Thank you for being here after all these years. I hope you join me as I continue working towards my goal of making cruelty-free beauty easy. I’d love to hear your take on cruelty-free and any thoughts you might have in the comments here.