Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow

I’m not going to start a retrospective on the tenth anniversary of this site — hold your applause — but as I was looking back at some early posts I found one that is timely to revisit.

Most everything I said in Hair and Back Again remains true.

In fact, I still have not had a salon haircut since.

And I sure as hell have never entered another barbershop.

I have cut my hair a few times, though. Literally. With my owns hands. Holding scissors, of course.

I’ve never gotten over my severe aversion to having another person hovering around my head with sharp or buzzing objects, so these days I handle that stuff myself.

Mind you, when I say handle, I am referring only to a roughly semi-annual trim.

I’ve been fortunate over the past few years to not feel — or be much better at ignoring — social pressure to keep my hair in any sort of “neat” way, so my default look has been long and unruly.

Now, alas, the day draws near when change must come.

I may be able to ignore mainstream hair norms, but I cannot ignore nature.

My hairline, always high, is creeping upward. My thickness, ever on the thin side, is diminishing.

I long ago decided I wouldn’t keep a sparse mane or, worse, be a guy with a ponytail in back and nothing up top. And while I yet have time before those coiffures could come to pass, I’d much rather get ahead of the game.

Cuts are coming. Maybe colors, too. Might as well have some fun with it while there’s fun to be had.

Ten Damn Years

Happy anniversary to lastgreypoet.com, which was founded on Oct. 1, 2010.

I didn’t start writing then, of course, but it was at that point that I started to really want to write for myself, after years of writing only for pay for others.

Sometimes, like when I had a newspaper column, that meant I got to write more or less what I wanted. Most days, though, I wrote what I was paid to.

Thus, this place. My place.

It started on Blogspot — remember Blogspot? — but I soon sprang for my own domain, using my longtime online moniker.

Of all things, my first post here was about baseball.

Since then I have been consistently inconsistent in my posting. Good days, bad days. Bad years …

Anyway, thanks for being here, even if it’s your first day.