Long as God Can Grow it

You haven’t heard from me in a while, I know. I should write some kind of treatise about work-life balance, about making time for creative pursuits, about this completely messed-up capitalist system that we have all been suckered into, or I might even write about six bad work habits and how to correct them so you can streamline your day, maximize your time, reach optimum productivity and all kinds of hooptedoodle.

Okay, well, not doing that today. I have serious problems.

I used to have a giant mane of curly unruly hair:

  

It took years for me to learn how to deal with it, to embrace it as uniquely mine. But every now and then (every five years or so) I get tired of dealing with it. There is SO MUCH of it. I could knit a sweater for a cat with all the hair I shed every day, which would be a completely pointless exercise, but honestly, sometimes I get tired of dealing with the sheer bulk of it. And then I find myself thinking about cutting it into a bob, or even (lured by pics of Halle Berry or Eva Pigford - oops now Eva Marcille), a cute little curly pixie, like so:

 

 
 
So last fall I cut it all off, right before Thanksgiving. And I liked it. And here’s the thing:  I have a lot of hair, and it grows really fast. If I wanted to have short hair, I had to commit to a regular schedule of haircuts. That quickly grew tiresome, and I missed being able to put my hair up, or back, or whatever.

Now I am growing it out. And I have middle-aged mom hair. And I hate it.

The standard advice here when you’re growing out your hair and are in the unhappy middle stage is to do something fun like coloring it. Oh, but that would be too easy. At the same time I cut my hair, I committed to no longer coloring it. I turned 45 a couple of weeks ago, and you know what? I think it is perfectly reasonable for someone my age to go gray.

The combination of the silver coming in and the hair growing out means I am doubly unhappy with this middle stage. My hair does not lie down until it gets long and the weight of it stretches the curl out a bit, so right now it is just growing up, stretching toward the sky, and it won’t be tamed. It is long enough to look like this:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

or maybe this:  

 

And yet it doesn’t look like that, not anywhere close.  I am not a high-maintenance person. I am a big fan of the “five minute face,” and my hair styling routine pretty much takes about five to ten minutes in the morning. I am struggling with hair bands and headbands and little clips and such. All this to say: not feeling quite the kickass glamour goddess these days.

Poor little me, I know. But we’ve all been there. I am trying my best. A wise person once said it’s not what’s on your head but what’s underneath. I’m working on that, too.