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jayfurrAnd now the moment you've all been waiting for: an update on my hair.
I shaved my head sometime back around March, I forget exactly when, and kept my head shaved for the remainder of the spring and summer, right up until the Twin Cities 3-Day. I guess I got pretty used to having my head shaved and used to seeing a bald, bearded weirdo in the mirror each morning, but the fact is, I wasn't a huge fan of spending ten minutes a day working my head over with an electric razor, feeling around on the back to see if I missed any spots and hoping I wouldn't walk into a customer site with big unshaved patches that I couldn't even see. So, when I got home from Minnesota in late August I let the shaving go for a day or two, then three, then four, and then suddenly I realized that if I didn't attend to it soon it'd be longer than I could readily do with an electric razor... and about that time I said "You know? The heck with it."
I've shaved my head off and on for the last three years, generally as part of a fundraising stunt for the Susan G. Komen 3-Day For The Cure. As people got used to the idea, though, it brought in less and less money. It was sort of akin to saying "If you donate some money toward the cure for breast cancer ... I'll... I'll... I'll DO SOMETHING I'VE DONE MANY TIMES BEFORE! WON'T THAT BE COOL???" This year, my head-shaving was more in support of co-workers who are battling breast cancer and who had lost their hair as a result of chemotherapy and less as a daring, what'll-he-do-next trick. I don't think I got a single major donation as a result of the bald head. And that's fine. I got plenty of donations for other reasons.
But now that I've let it grow back out, I'm reminded of an inescapable fact: I'm gray.
See, there's something else I've been doing for years: I've been dyeing my hair.
Lady Clairol and I are old, old friends. Sometimes I go with brown-black, sometimes chestnut brown, once in a while a reddish brown that probably fools absolutely no one. But even though my hair is nothin' compared to the long, flowing locks of the models pictured on the boxes of hair dye, I've always found the dyeing process annoying, smelly, and frustrating. That's probably partly due to having a beard and trying to dye it as well each time. It's no fun at all having hair dye in your mustache, right under your nose, for up to a half hour.
But on the other hand, it's not particularly fun being 43 and looking 55. A few years ago, when I wasn't even 40, my students started asking me what it was like growing up in the '50s. I'd blanch and say "Um, I dunno, I'm sure it was fine, but I was born in 1967." But with my gray, gray hair, they tended not to believe me.
One might think that looking "distinguished" is a good thing. I'm sure it is, if you're a diplomat or George Clooney or someone who's in an occupation where having stylishly gray locks is a real boon, but I'm not. I'm a software trainer in an industry that sees more and more young programmers and engineers entering the field each year, and frankly, looking like their grandfather is not a way to build credibility.
And tonight, looking in the mirror, I just had to ask, "Is this really the way you want to go through the rest of your life?" That person in the mirror doesn't really mesh with my mind's-eye view of who I am... but on the other hand, I'm tired or shaving and I'm tired of dyeing my hair, and unless someone thinks up a fourth option, "learning to live with it" seems to be the only alternative left.
What do you think? Is it time to bite the bullet before this weekend's 3-Day here in the DC area and go buy a box of hair dye and spend a pleasant evening sitting in the bathroom watching a timer? Or should I shave it all off again? Or... horrors... should I just let things be?
I shaved my head sometime back around March, I forget exactly when, and kept my head shaved for the remainder of the spring and summer, right up until the Twin Cities 3-Day. I guess I got pretty used to having my head shaved and used to seeing a bald, bearded weirdo in the mirror each morning, but the fact is, I wasn't a huge fan of spending ten minutes a day working my head over with an electric razor, feeling around on the back to see if I missed any spots and hoping I wouldn't walk into a customer site with big unshaved patches that I couldn't even see. So, when I got home from Minnesota in late August I let the shaving go for a day or two, then three, then four, and then suddenly I realized that if I didn't attend to it soon it'd be longer than I could readily do with an electric razor... and about that time I said "You know? The heck with it."
I've shaved my head off and on for the last three years, generally as part of a fundraising stunt for the Susan G. Komen 3-Day For The Cure. As people got used to the idea, though, it brought in less and less money. It was sort of akin to saying "If you donate some money toward the cure for breast cancer ... I'll... I'll... I'll DO SOMETHING I'VE DONE MANY TIMES BEFORE! WON'T THAT BE COOL???" This year, my head-shaving was more in support of co-workers who are battling breast cancer and who had lost their hair as a result of chemotherapy and less as a daring, what'll-he-do-next trick. I don't think I got a single major donation as a result of the bald head. And that's fine. I got plenty of donations for other reasons.
But now that I've let it grow back out, I'm reminded of an inescapable fact: I'm gray.
See, there's something else I've been doing for years: I've been dyeing my hair.
Lady Clairol and I are old, old friends. Sometimes I go with brown-black, sometimes chestnut brown, once in a while a reddish brown that probably fools absolutely no one. But even though my hair is nothin' compared to the long, flowing locks of the models pictured on the boxes of hair dye, I've always found the dyeing process annoying, smelly, and frustrating. That's probably partly due to having a beard and trying to dye it as well each time. It's no fun at all having hair dye in your mustache, right under your nose, for up to a half hour.
But on the other hand, it's not particularly fun being 43 and looking 55. A few years ago, when I wasn't even 40, my students started asking me what it was like growing up in the '50s. I'd blanch and say "Um, I dunno, I'm sure it was fine, but I was born in 1967." But with my gray, gray hair, they tended not to believe me.
One might think that looking "distinguished" is a good thing. I'm sure it is, if you're a diplomat or George Clooney or someone who's in an occupation where having stylishly gray locks is a real boon, but I'm not. I'm a software trainer in an industry that sees more and more young programmers and engineers entering the field each year, and frankly, looking like their grandfather is not a way to build credibility.
And tonight, looking in the mirror, I just had to ask, "Is this really the way you want to go through the rest of your life?" That person in the mirror doesn't really mesh with my mind's-eye view of who I am... but on the other hand, I'm tired or shaving and I'm tired of dyeing my hair, and unless someone thinks up a fourth option, "learning to live with it" seems to be the only alternative left.
What do you think? Is it time to bite the bullet before this weekend's 3-Day here in the DC area and go buy a box of hair dye and spend a pleasant evening sitting in the bathroom watching a timer? Or should I shave it all off again? Or... horrors... should I just let things be?
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no subject
Date: 2010-10-06 03:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-10-06 04:29 am (UTC)hurt your career, you will have to continue to dye it.
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Date: 2010-10-06 05:56 pm (UTC)Also, if you go goatee, I think the front of your beard and the mustache are not that bad. Then you could dye your head but leave your face alone. It's not uncommon to have more gray hair in the beard than on the head, so it wouldn't look strange.
no subject
Date: 2010-10-06 09:13 pm (UTC)And no slam against anyone who wears a goatee... but I've always thought that they look sorta pretentious.
no subject
Date: 2010-10-08 01:08 am (UTC)