Beards

I spent most of my 20s and early 30s clean-shaven. I looked pretty much like this.

Well, maybe not that good-looking. Pretty much no one is that good looking. But it wasn't bad either.

Anyway, when my daughter was born in 2005 I began to get lax about the facial hair and then by the summer I decided to let it grow. Since then I have either had a full-on beard of some fashion or a trimmed-down on, usually in what is sometimes called a "van Dyke" style. But it really isn't. It's basically a mashup of a mustache and a goatee.

So I had this great idea to shave off my facial hair about a week ago. It's been eight years, I was kind of tired of it, so why not, right? And I wasn't losing all of it, I decided to keep the mustache. A style I haven't worn in 16 years.

So last Sunday I went ahead and did it. Now, in my mind I pictured it coming out something like this:

Instead, the end result was more like this:

Now, I am not as swarthy as this guy*. My hair is better and I dress better. Which is saying something because "GQ" is not a nickname I have ever held. And I look better than this guy. But the mustache ... no. No no no. It doesn't work for me anymore.

Suffice it to say, I have immediately begun regrowing my beard. Luckilly my hair grows at a decent clip so it shouldn't take too long. Thank God.

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* For those of you who do not recognize the image, this is the former #2 of Al-Qaeda, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, when US forces arrested him. I do NOT look like him. Just that the gap between the expected result and actual result was this wide.