Heart and Mind

Saving Face

OK, I've got this problem here...

Well, it's not really so much of a problem as it is an issue of minor import that seems like more of a problem than it is because lacks a solution.

The non-problem is that I have become bored with my face.

You see, if you harken back to September of 2005, you'll find this musing. It was the second posting here on the blog, and some might argue the first "real" entry since the actual first one was a welcome message of sorts. (For the record, I'm not one of those people. I think of it as the second posting.)

Anyway, that post described above was called "A Close Shave—Facial Hair Musings.") You do not need to read it to proceed here, but, naturally, I would encourage you to do so. Hell, read 'em all!

So that musing discusses how I had recently shaved a beard off and about how it was the first time in five years I had done that. It also was only the third or fourth time I had done so in the 10 years leading up to that point.

I discussed how I still liked the beard, but I didn't want to be "one of those people who is afraid to shave," or one of those people who friends never see without their trademark facial hair. And I also said I liked growing scruff and "playing around and growing different things in and out."

Well, over the last two-and-a-half years, I have lived by those words, and done so in a big way. I grew the beard back and shaved it off more times in those few years than I had for 10 years prior. I grew it long, I kept it short. I grew lots and lots of stubble. I maintained stubble, like a really short beard. I grew side burns that ranged from "extremely huge" to a size that I called "small-ish," but my wife describes as, "You think they're small, but they still look freakishly long...and you have to remove those points." I grew lots of soul patches and several horse-shoe mustaches. I grew 'em thick and long and small and cropped. I even very briefly had a handlebar mustache with little twists at the end and also a "civil war style" beard, where the chin is shaved out, like Lemmy from Motorhead's famous look. (Although no goatees, van dykes, or 80s-mustaches; I don't like those for me.)

And it's been fun. And since around January of this year, I had had the beard back, which was the longest I kept one during this particular two-year stretch. And then I shaved it off last weekend. And that brings us to today and the issue I have...

I am bored with my face. I am clean shaven now, but I don't love it like I did when I first went clean shaven a while back. I like the beard, but I haven't been loving it like I used to back in the day. I still like the stubble, but it seems kind of pointless to always be stuck in-between the two extremes all the time. The horse-shoe mustache is cool, but it can't be a permanent fixture 365-a-year on me. So, I don't really know what to do. When I was a kid, I was a dude without a beard. As an adult, I've been an official "guy with a beard." These days, I have no idea what I am or what I should be in this department. But I don't really like my face so much.

And that's probably what it comes down to. I'm getting older, my face is probably looking worse. We rarely get better looking as we age. I'm not sure what to do with my face these days.

This may change, but for now, I am bored of my face.

posted by Steve @ 4:29 PM