Magus's Grimoire [Abridged]

[So I'm totally going to need a new default avatar photo soon, aren't I?]

Got my hair cut today. I'm more sure than in December that this one's going to work for me. I might not end up loving it (still getting used to it, obviously), but I think I'm not going to hate it and it's not going to constantly annoy me, so yay.

This is the result of a Deva Curly cut. It took two hours. Some consultation (and I had a picture, which helped, although what I ended up with is pretty far from the picture...in a good way) first. Then cut, dry, which was time intensive. Then a wash, and trimming of bits that weren't falling right. After that a dry under the diffuser, followed by some final adjustments (including a segment that really wasn't looking quite right).

Throughout the process, my stylist, Katie, was really great about communicating to make sure we were going in the direction I wanted. Especially when she was going to do something different than the photo, because it made more sense for my hair or was actually more what I wanted. Great experience.

Admittedly, my wallet's not thanking me right now, but my shoulders are. Totally worth it. Citrus Salon & Spa in Canton, CT. Recommend.

( Photos... )

Should be straightforward and easy to maintain, too.

[If this is too frequent/uninteresting, feel free to filter these posts out on the "hair" tag if your aggregator allows it. If it doesn't, complain to the manufacturers for giving you a crap product.]

I've spent much of the last couple of days reading around at CurlTalk and learning more about how curly hair works and how the whole CurlyGirl/no-poo thing works from a chemistry perspective.

One thing that kind of jumped out at me as I was reading was that most of the basic hair care regimens suggested sounded like they'd be less stress on my arms than all the brushing and combing I've been doing, so I'm going to start experimenting.

Yesterday I walked to CVS and got a cheap ($0.06 due to luck and a kind cashier) bottle of VO5 Free Me Freesia conditioner. This morning I washed my scalp and hair with it thoroughly, put a bit more in, rinsed with dilute vinegar, squeezed out most of the water, and gathered things up on top of my head with a T-shirt for a couple hours to dry out of the way while I went about my business.

I know I'm probably going to have to look into some sort of finishing product to hold things together and prevent the top from lifting off and frizzing, but two things dissuaded me from doing so yet. The main one was that I was kind of paralyzed by indecision looking at shelves and shelves of options (and the product mosephine kindly recommended wasn't carried). The second is that by only introducing one new product to my routine, I can kind of get a sense of what and how much it does on its own before adding something else in. Yay data.

So, this is what I've got, about half an hour after letting it out of the shirt. Not sure how I feel about it, but it's definitely . . . different.

Well, that was fun.

At a bit under 7 hours, I'm close enough to completely dry to call it done. If I really feel for it, I can still find some dampness.

I think I'm ready for part two. These photos are taken an hour and a half later (about two hours drying time).

The outer layer of my hair is dry or slightly damp to the touch. Underneath it's still quite damp, but should no longer be dripping, so I can probably go put on real clothes now.

Again, much curlier than I think it is down at the bottom. The frizzing of the top layer is starting as well.

I appear to actually be serious about this at the moment, although I don't know if it's going to last. But the medical purposes argument is working in my head right now (I won't hurt myself in hair care, so I might feel and heal better; hair will also be less of an impediment to exercise such as going for a swim, so ditto, etc.) The reminder that it's not a permanent change, would be back to "long" within a few months and back to normal in a year or two helps.

So, soliciting opinions time. If I decide to cut my hair "short", what style should I go for. What reflects my personality as you know me? What do you think I'd enjoy and have fun with and would be a source of happiness?

Considerations: Part of the goal is to take a load off my arms. Required care probably shouldn't be too much more than washing in the morning and brief maintenance in front of the mirror afterward. My hair is very prone to what's commonly referred to as "Jew-Fro" in an unpleasant way; this should be accounted for.

Also, should I employ use of dye to render my hair a color human genetics never intended? If so, what color?

Links to photos of suggested cuts totally welcome.

(Note: because of the poofiness, shoulder length with option to gather worked quite poorly for me in 1997. I believe the defining quote was "It looks like a squirrel climbing up your back." I'll entertain ideas for long but not so long, but they'd need to account for this, offer significant improvement over the current state of affairs, and not result in my commonly having hair on my face. Hair, even/especially a single hair, touching my face is a thing—it freaks me out at a visceral level and I can't concentrate on anything else until it goes away. Kind of like feeling something with lots of legs crawling around on your back.)

Have fun!

[Edit: I was wrong; I have curly hair, not wavy hair.]

I think I am very seriously considering cutting my hair. Not a bit shorter like last time but a lot of it, so it's short, in the hope that it might be more manageable. Which it won't, because the reason I grew it out in the first place was in the hope that gravity would help me tame it since no combination of frequent cutting and application of significant amounts of assorted chemicals seemed to do so.

It turns out that gravity, at least combined with tension through binding, does the trick. However, it only does the trick when my hair is relatively slack and heavy, a state it's in when it's wet, but not when it dries. Which is only achieved when, well, my hair is wet and heavy. Which is itself uncomfortable, as it gets my back wet.

Also, caring for my hair requires frequent brushing and rebraiding, which causes me observable physical pain in my arms every time I do it. Which, unsurprisingly, leads to my procrastinating doing so, which leads to it being in worse shape, which results in my feeling unfit for human company.

So I'm contemplating chopping it off for real, back to a point that doesn't require painful care. Except when I remember my childhood, I realize that's probably not a realistic goal, and would probably require getting it cut every 2-3 weeks to have any hope of achieving any sort of desirable effect, which I flat out can't afford.

Plus, at this point I have a significant amount of identity in being the guy with the long braid. I'm not sure if I could cope psychologically with a change that big. It would seriously affect how I thought of myself, and probably not in a good way. I'd be tempted to dye it or something, because I'm having trouble with the idea of having "normal" hair, but of course there are social and theoretical economic pressures against doing so.

I think the big deal is the social pressure from the people who are close to me, though. After something like 15 years my mother has finally largely stopped commenting on my choice of hairstyle (although every now and then she'll still remind me of how it would open doors to jobs if I'd switch to something more normal). I'm not such a fully grown independent man that the idea of a conversation where she congratulates me for finally coming to my senses about it is very palatable. Nor is the idea of the conversation where she chastises me from changing from one unpalatable to potential employers style to another.

Finally, at various times over the past couple of years, I've mentioned considering cutting my hair to my girlfriends. Their reactions have been negative in ways which have made me really uncomfortable (e.g. joking pouting/"noooooo"), and suggested clearly that my making this sort of radical change to my hairstyle would reduce their happiness. Not that I wouldn't do it anyway if that were the only thing on the con side, but it certainly makes it harder with uncertainty.

These last two combined make it a lot harder to talk about, because it kind of seems like thinking aloud about the issue to someone whose opinion I trust has a tendency to result in someone saying something which makes me regret mentioning it. If you can't guess, I'm feeling a ton of anxiety about posting this, in anticipation of getting responses which are upsetting, of hurting people I love just by what I've said, of people potentially saying hurtful things about people I love, of of an incredibly uncomfortable silence because everybody's afraid of hurting someone.

OTOH, I keep saying to myself I want to write here more, and a lot of what's keeping me from doing so is this sort of fear, so I guess I'm just going to post it.

BTW, hair care tips targetted to the sort of hair I have [thick and wavy curly, prone to absorbing a lot of water and trapping it for a long time, but with an outer layer that gets dry and kinks up rapidly, generally surprisingly resistant to split ends] would be quite welcome.

[Comment Policy: This post talks about real people who may be reading it in a potentially unflattering light. Please keep their feelings in mind if you choose to comment on that aspect of what I've written.]