Life with a beard

I’ve finally reached my first 6 months long beard and I think it’s time to write some kind of report on what it feels like to live with long hair on my face. The timing feels right as it is november/movember/no shave november or whatever you want to call it.

Beards are kind of a trend at the moment, which is good and bad at the same time in my opinion. It’s nice that it becomes more accepted by people but seeing too much can also kill the appeal.

For my part, I’m not growing it to follow anyone or anything, as far as I remember I have always liked beards, it probably comes from the fact that I have never seen my father’s clean shaven face. By the time I finally got the courage to let it grow past a few weeks, everyone was already doing it.

Before starting I’d like to make clear that I’m not part of any gang or group nor am I a religion extremist that would make it “acceptable” to have a big beard, I just do it for the love of the beard. Be also advised that I’ll talk about my own feelings as a sensitive men, most men won’t feel the same because they are probably less sensitive.

Society’s pressure

Most non-bearded people seem to consider beard growing as a sign of laziness, from my own experience it is harder to grow a beard than to shave it frequently. Why I’m saying that? Feeling people judging you everyday for being “different” is pretty hard, especially when this difference can easily be erased by spending a few minutes in front of a mirror with a razor. I’m always juggling with the “Should I keep it or shave it?” question. Having a pretty girl telling you that you look way better without it hits the ego quite hard too. People keep telling me that I’ll have a hard time finding a job, it’s probably true for most customer service jobs, like it’s the case for people with visible tattoos and piercings. From what I know, open minded people still exist so it may be longer to find a job while having a great beard but not impossible.

The beard VS other accessories

Have you ever seen someone showing his/her new tattoo or piercing to a friend and getting a response like “I think you looked better without it!”? I personnally haven’t ever seen this, because people try to be polite, yet I get that kind of reply for my beard. Since when does injecting ink under your skin or inserting metal pieces in it got better accepted by society than letting some hairs NATURALLY grow on your face? People should at least accept the beard as an accessory to your face, women have makeup, men have beards.

Hobo VS ordinary guy

Everytime I see a hobo I always ask myself “Does my beard makes me look like a homeless guy?”. I came to the conclusion that it doesn’t. Having a beard is only one feature of many needed to look like a bum. As long as it is kept clean and so is the rest of your body and clothes, chances are low that someone will mistake you for a hobo.

Guys VS girls

Guys seem to accept my bearded face more easily, I feel like some respect me for having it. In the first few months they seemed to think my beard was nice, but now that it is finally long enough to start getting away from my face’s shape, most of them want me to shave.

Girls just don’t like it as soon as it quits the “stubble” stage (from my experience at least). They see it as completely unaesthetic.

From the two sides I have heard the “You’ll never find a girlfriend if you don’t shave” argument quite often. I’m not really sure about this one because I have never been the kind of guy that attracted girls in the first place, whether I was bearded or not, so I haven’t seen any difference yet. I like to think that my beard is a “dumb girl filter”, if a girl focuses more on the beard than the person behind it, I prefer to keep away from her anyway. For those who say that the first impression is really important I say that I am willing to take the risk of giving a bad impression to stay true to myself.

Beyond the look

For me, a beard is more than just hairs on my face. It’s a matter of self confidence, to hold tight on my goals even if 95% of people don’t want me to do it. It’s about patience and persistance, just like getting in shape or climbing up the career ladder. It is part of becoming a better human being. I also get some kind of confidence boost from having a beard on my face, I don’t know exactly what’s creating that feeling, maybe it’s the feeling of looking good or being authentic (from my point of view). I guess we can compare it to getting fake boobs, the accessory itself doesn’t magically elevate the person’s confidence level but she still feels like she has more of it because of the accessory. It feel like I’m a more complete person with it, that’s all.

Drawing attention

Of course I don’t ask every stranger if my beard has caught their attention but I can guess it easily by the look on their face. I feel like people notices me more with a beard than they were when I was an ordinary clean-shaved guy. I’m an introvert so I’m not really asking for attention but it feels good to get noticed sometimes.

I have a good sense of humour so people naturally tell jokes on me, now most jokes are about my beard. Sadly it doesn’t take long to notice that the same jokes come over and over again.

Mirrors

For me growing a beard is like getting bigger muscles, I can’t stop looking at it everytime I’m near a mirror. Seeing a change in length gives me the same satisfaction as having some muscle gain, it just feels good.

Eating

Eating is normally an easy job, now try eating with a mustache and a beard. Ben Parker once said: “With great mustache comes great food absortion” or something like that. Pretty much any food touching it will stay in it. It can get really embarassing when eating a burger or peanut butter. At least this can be easily avoided by the use of extra napkins. I chose not to trim my mustache for a while because it would make it thicker, once it got over my top lip it started curling up (I didn’t expect that) so I kept it this way. It still catches everything though, I get the taste of what it is to be a ginger when I put Sriracha in my meal. I could easily live without having to chew on mustache after taking a bite and getting hairs caught between my teeth though.

Water magnet

Forgetting to dry your beard after showering means having water dripping from your chin until you decide to go back to the bathroom and dry it properly.

Taking care of it

I never really cared about combing my hair but I do it everyday for my beard, I must do it while under the shower or else the comb gets caught in my steel wool hair.

Should you grow a beard?

Well if you are a woman, probably not (but who am I to tell you what to do?), but for men the only way to know is to try it!

How not to crumble under pressure to shave

Here is some tricks I found to keep my motivation and not shave my beard:

  • Defining a length/time goal (6 months or 6 inches or long enough to make a braid out of it, etc)
  • Trimming it to even it or to make it fit your face more (watch out for that because you may also slow the growth thereby)
  • Taking care of it so it looks good (grooming, combing, washing, etc)
  • Find a person (or several) to take as a model (a bearded guy that you want to look like)
  • Follow beard pages on social networks (so you get motivation from their posts and followers)
  • Take progress pictures to follow the growth (by looking at these photos you’ll see how far you’ve gone and the time it will take to come back to the same point after shaving)

Last words

My experience in beard growing is pretty tough up to now as almost no one else but me wants me to keep it. It also confirms that I’m on the right path to be who I really want to be, me. So for the guys thinking about growing one or struggling to keep the razor away I’ll say the same thing as I would say for any kind of life goals, do it for yourself. If that makes you happy then f*** what others think of it.

One year beard and shaving

I have finally reached my goal of having a “yeard” AKA a full year of beard growth. I’m really proud that I made it through but I must say that it has been pretty hard for me. As you already know from the title, I decided to shave it off, but I’ll start by saying what was positive about the experience and at the end I’ll talk about the reasons why I shaved it all. This post is some kind of a continuation to the one I made at about six months of growth, I’ll keep about the same structure but I’ll instead write my feelings of the moment, so I recommend that you read the two articles so it will make more sense.

Society’s pressure

As for the pressure, nothing really changed, I don’t look more “acceptable” to others at 6 months than at 12 months. In my friend and family circle, most people got used to it and nearly stopped talking about it, but it stayed the same for the rest of the population.

Hobo VS ordinary guy

In the past article I said that I didn’t look like a homeless guy but the more it grew the more I thought I looked like one, this thing was so curly that it was nearly impossible to make it look “clean” and well kept. And I don’t want to go to the barber shop every two weeks so I was doomed to look like something I don’t want to look like.

Guys VS girls

For the guys, everything stayed pretty much the same as it was at 6 months, most of them don’t care and some find it really nice.

<frustration>I see a lot of beard memes, and in my case at least, they’re all bulls**t, a beard doesn’t f**king attract any woman. I’ve been single for quite a while now and a beard didn’t help me finding my soul mate, if it has done something, it probably have driven it away from me.</frustration> Ok I had to say it, sorry. Seriously, it seems that it’s a turn off for most women, try it out and see for yourself (not that 3 days long beard, a real one). From what I’ve seen, if you want to have a beard and still be attractive, you’ve got to be blessed by nature (or maybe just old enough) for it to grow thick evenly all over your face and also have that natural charisma and self confidence that looks appealing on the opposite sex. And I’m obviously not there yet. I believe that the day we find true love it won’t matter how well or bad we look, but I really have no idea so lets keep hoping for it to be true.

Beyond the look

I think the greatest benefit I got from growing that beard was the self confidence I gained. The stare I got from people whenever I was in public and all their comments about shaving and looking good, it obviously made me less sensitive to other people’s hate and more confident about my own life choices. But at the same time it made me more aware of the importance of the image we project on others. I think that a man looks way more badass with a beard, even if the guy under it has nothing badass about him.

Drawing attention

It gets attention, whether you want it or not, you stand out of the crowd when you have a beard, and that feeling is awesome, it makes you feel like you’re “more” than other men, I bet some confidence comes from that feeling. It also feels great when someone tells you “hey nice beard” although it doesn’t happen has much as I thought it would.

Facing reality

I follow many beard pages on Facebook so I see many photos of guys at a six month growth who have a beard longer than mine after a full year without trimming. Some would say that we must not compare ourselves to others, while I agree with this, I feel more like I have to wait two times more than others for the same result, and with it being relatively hard on my morale, I don’t think it’s worth it anymore. I have a pretty strong neck beard but the cheek and mustache hair are visibly weaker than the rest, I’m not sure how it looks from the outside (from other people’s point of view) but I get annoyed by it whenever it get in front of a mirror. I feel like it’s not mature yet even though I’m nearly 28 years old. I guess I’ll wait some time and try again someday.

Shaving

The same paterns seem to repeat themselves as I remember when I was young and trying to grow longer hair because all skaters were doing it, after some time I just got tired and shaved everything. Now that I don’t care much about my hair anymore I feel the same thing about my beard and after a few months I feel an urge to shave it to none. I guess I’m just like these girls on Facebook that change their hair and post statuses about a new life beginning. Like I said earlier, I gained a lot of self confidence from growing this beard but I have come to a point where I feel like it’s draining all of my energy. They say men think about sex every 7 seconds, but for me this thought was replaced by the thought of shaving (ok maybe not completely…). You know when your computer suddenly starts lagging intensively and you find out that some process is taking 100% CPU time, in my brain that process was thoughts-of-shaving.exe. For the last two years I have been working on myself to live a simplier life and lately this beard was making me feel like everything was harder because of it, so f**k it I’ll just shave and start living again. If you’ve read my other articles you probably know that I keep talking about ways to make life more enjoyable, it was getting less enjoyable because of the beard so it had to go, just like if it was a bad relationship. I don’t just say things on this blog, I try to apply them as much as I can too ;).

The matter of the look after all

The more I get older, the more I seem to think that it’s important to show oulselves on our best side (while still being true to ourselves). It might seem a bit superficial, but I like beautiful girls, so why shouldn’t I look like what I expect of others? While I agree that inner beauty is as important as physical beauty (maybe more), when we see someone we don’t know (in person), we have to rely on physical apparence before we can get to know the inner one. And I’m pretty sure that most of us will be more interested in knowing someone deeply if the person in question is good looking externally. It was a personal challenge for me to grow a beard for a full year, once that the goal is met, I have to keep on going forward, and for me going forward required that I shaved.

Should you grow a beard?

I still think that men should try it at least once, there really is more to it than just hair on your face, it makes you see the world from a different eye. I say try it and see where it takes you, and if it doesn’t live up to the expectations, then shave and go on.

Final words

I still think that men look great with a beard, but I feel like I need to look “normal” for a while so I can keep on making progress in my life. And don’t forget, it’s not the beard on the outside that counts, it’s the beard on the inside.

Being yourself in a clone world

We hear a lot about it, everyone is saying that we have to be ourselves, but only few people are actually able to accept the difference in others.

This whole year I have been working on myself to be a better and happier person in general, which also means that I tried to eliminite the fake persona I was showing to people and instead show my real personality.

Changing yourself is something that is really though because you have to lose old habits and ways of thinking. Finding solutions is not really hard, it only requires some thinking, what’s hard is to apply them in real-life situations without getting back to your old and fake way of dealing with it.

But there’s something harder, dealing with people who aren’t able to accept it (aka closed minded people), and from my experience you will meet a lot more closed minded people than open minded ones. I also call these people “brainwashed” because they only do what they are told to without questioning it. So when someone stands out of the norm, they won’t be afraid to criticize, even if it has absolutely no influence on them.

It is even harder if you are a sensitive person and if you have low self-esteem because you won’t be able to convince people that your way is right too. Even worse is the fact that you’ll also doubt your own life choices because of them.

You’ll also find out how much the world attaches importance to things that don’t really matter in the end, especially about appearance and jobs. Say to someone that you meditate everyday or that you make shrunken heads in your spare time and it will seem like you were talking to the table, now grow a beard and quit your job and see how much it annoys them.

Now you might be reading this and saying to yourself “I don’t care if you grow a beard”, I don’t either, but try growing one (or maybe completely shave your hair if you’re a women) and see how much people will tell you about it like it’s the only thing that matters in the world. I have a five months long beard, and I can tell that people put too much importance on physical appearance. I lost count of the negative comments I had about my beard, “it’s too long”, “you look better without it”, “you’ll never find a job if you don’t shave”, etc. Whose problem is it besides mine? Yet people can’t refrain telling me about it.

The other thing people can’t stand is someone that is not working five days a week like everyone else. I managed to live this whole year by only working for a few months, I didn’t had any kind of welfare money or anything else, I just lived with money I already had or worked for. So I’m not a burden for anyone yet everyone seems to be annoyed because I have more free time than them. I actually made the choice of having less luxury to work less. It doesn’t involve anyone else but me, yet people can’t accept it and keep telling me that I should find a steady job and work more.

It may seem unsignificant when you’re not facing it in your life, but constantly being criticize by people and endlessly questioning your owns choices gets really tiring. I’m not sure why people do this but I think they are either jealous or scared. Jealous of not having the courage to do the same with themselves or just scared of what they don’t know. Or maybe they are afraid of other people’s judgment, so they make for it by judging others?

This post doesn’t give any answer to the problem because I don’t have any, the only advice I can give you is to hold firmly onto your dreams and don’t let others break them with their close-minded opinions. If you are good at arguing you can try to make them understand but it will most certainly be wasted time and energy, spend that energy on yourself instead or on people that really matter.