About June of 2002 it was. The first company I had worked at just out of college had just shut down. My old boss had died of a brain tumor and I spent the last month closing down the office and getting ready to start my consultancy.
So I turned in my office keys and walked out of the building for the last time on a Friday afternoon. Oddly enough it was 8 years to the day that I had begun work. Don’t ask. These weird coincidences happen to me all the time.
Anyways, next Monday I woke up without a thing to do or place to be. Going through my morning routine I reached for the razor and then paused looking at my scruffy ‘weekend’ face in the mirror. I realized it had been awhile since I had no real responsibilities or a schedule to keep. I decided that I wanted to take advantage of that. I was 31 and this might be the last real chance to be a bum. So that’s what I did for the next 2 months, and the first step in that process was to do something (or rather not do something) that I had wanted to do for a long time. Grow a beard.
a popular web comic’s take on beards
Growing a beard is a difficult proposition in the modern office environment. Specially if you are in a sales or other job that requires you to meet with people. The growth stage is stubbly, awkward, and itchy. Not things that you want clients to see. But really there’s no other way to do it. You have to go through the weeks of ugly, stilted, and ugly fuzz until one day it starts looking like a beard.
The first beard grew and grew over the course of the next two months and finally reached a Fidel Castro-esque stature. I could actually wring it out after a shower. A female acquaintance I had not seen for a while became mesmerized by it and wanted to touch it to see if it was real or not.
No. No photos exist of this. They were all “lost”.
Alas after a few months I decided to get rid of it. My family hated it and since I was in the midst of my consultancy I decided I needed to look more professional for clients.
So I had a barber trim it off and leave a mustache. I’ve always had a very boyish face and I wanted something to age my appearance to what I felt would be an appropriate look for my age.
For the next few years I carried on with my mustache till I turned 40 and decided I was now ready to start a new phase in my life and why not with a beard again? But not a crazy all out beard as before but a trimmed and well-managed beard. A somber thoughtful beard for a thoughtful somber person.
Officially my beard is a Van Dyke or a circle beard. This is a short clipped beard connecting the mustache to the chin that does not connect to the sideburns. Not as conceited as the goatee, not as scary as the full beard. A beard with the benefits of a beard and not as many of the drawbacks.
I realize that a beard may be a turn off to some women and I’ve had some suggestions that I remove even this modest amount of facial hair for a clean look. If the right person requested it I would probably shave it. Perhaps one day I will anyways. But at this moment I think it projects the image that I want the world to see.
More importantly, this is who I feel I am right now and that carries an importance in itself. Don’t be the person that other people want you to be so you’ll fit their view of what you should look like in their world. Be the person you want to be in your world. When you are who you want to be then people will respect you for it and accept you, beard (or no beard) included.
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