All About Facial Hair

I didn't really need to shave my face until my death was relatively close.

I didn't have to shave in high school, and I could go for a week without shaving in much of college before anything would be apparent. I still remember my sophomore year I'd decided to leave a little soul patch area under the lip, and a guy in my dorm said, extremely casually (as was Flem's way), "You have something under your lip."

My next stop was my dorm room to shave that shit off.

At some point--probably after law school, when I actually got paid to show up somewhere--I had to start shaving. Even though I could wear shorts and t-shirts much of my time at my first job, I never felt comfortable letting my facial hair grow out.

The last couple of years, however, I've evidently tried to make up for lost time with my facial hair (as I have with so much else).

Last winter, in the midst of my funemployment, my hair was getting super-shaggy and I had a mustache (just a mustache) and I felt like a freak. For over a month, I made an actual effort to maintain a mustache by shaving other parts of my face.

While it might not be the healthiest mental approach, there's something to be said for never going all-out. If you don't give your all, you do not become invested and therefore you can shrug and say that it doesn't really matter. In some ways, it probably doesn't matter. Success has the added sweetness of earned at little cost.

The downside is, of course, potential is never maximized. Opportunities are lost. Discrete failure is averted, but systemic and holistic failure is all but ensured.

When I grow facial hair, it's no big deal. I am not trying to do anything... I'm just letting it go.

Once I decide to shave part of it, though? That means that, at whatever level, I'm making an actual decision. I'm investing some of my very self into a mustache.

I am at that stage with my facial hair, as I sit and type this. I have a mustache and chin beard, and it's been growing for almost two months. The mustache is long enough that when I smile it covers part of my teeth in pictures and it's a constant threat to intermingle with my food and drink (as I consume them; not the stuff I keep in, say, my refrigerator).

So... I have to do something. I am not ready to get rid of it entirely, I don't think, but I fear that if I trim it or attempt to shape it, then I will open myself up to ridicule. To failure.

My life is so difficult.