29 1/12: The Adolescent

A lit­tle while ago, I stopped shav­ing. I had the flu for about five days, and already had a five-day shad­ow devel­oped when that began. Then with a lack of social engage­ments, I decid­ed to let it keep grow­ing, lest I lose such a gen­er­ous head start that only began because I was too lazy when I was sick.

I took this pic­ture, and it was more than three weeks with­out touch­ing a razor at that point.

Self portrait at 29 1/12

 

Aaron always keeps a neat­ly trimmed beard, so I asked him how he takes care of it; which direc­tion to shave, what length to start trim­ming, etc. It was strange to be seek­ing shav­ing advice from some­one at this point in my life. Most of the hair is around the mouth and on chin, with only an embar­rass­ing half-dozen wires sprout­ing ran­dom­ly from my cheeks, so it required a touch of main­te­nance.

For a long time, I did­n’t know what to think of it, whether I liked it or not. Aaron said to me, “Sometimes, you don’t need to know”, and I went with that for a while. Maybe time would give me an answer.

Soon after, I start­ed shav­ing again. It was­n’t get­ting any thick­er, and I did­n’t think I could pull it off.

I turn 30 in 11 months, and I still can’t grow a beard.

The Turning 30 Series

5 comments

  1. The mous­tache looks good. I turn 30 in a lit­tle over a year and I still can’t grow one. But I am sport­ing a win­ter beard right now.

    • Thanks! I’ve had a few peo­ple com­pli­ment me on it, even though any sen­tence with the words “mus­tache” and “you” is still so for­eign to me.

  2. Well, i don’t have facial hair and I still have 5 years until im 30 so I can’t com­ment on either of those but I can tell you that light blue is a great col­or on you!

    • I recent­ly pur­chased that sweater actu­al­ly. I do a lot of blues and browns in my wardrobe and house.

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