Are you there, God? It's me, Zach.

 Paging Dr. Rogaine, we have an emergency in the Zach ward.

So I was thinking about shaving my beard today. And I'd been thinking about it for weeks now. It's kinda annoying and getting to be a pain. But today I was gonna shave it for the wrong reason.

I guess somewhere deep in my brain there was some correlation between professionalism and a shaved (or at least kempt) facial hair. Truth be told, this is not completely unfounded. The picture below calls Joaquin Phoenix's situation a "crazy, homeless guy beard". Personally I don't feel like outward appearance (or more specifically facial hair) is any indication of self-respect, but I suppose I get why some people do.

I know I sort of look like a caveman lately. It's totally cool and I'm down with it, and luckily most of the work I do involves darkrooms, basements, bad lighting, or solitary computer work where I don't regularly have to explain why I look like a Cro-Magnon. I hate shaving because I ALWAYS cut myself, and I hate trimming my beard because it requires a firm commitment to keeping it up that I can't really make. So letting it grow out became an obvious and easy solution.

But I think I had a moment this afternoon where I thought for a second that being me wasn't good enough. And despite having felt that many times in the past it's really not a good thing to think at all. If someone's going to judge you based on something stupid like a big crazy beard then they're really not someone you want to be around anyway.

Here I am moving a bunch of rocks and looking for a Gigabit switch last week. I hate networking.

I'll shave it eventually. It is getting kinda annoying and random shit (food [every day], toothpaste [three or four times a week], feathers [once, that i know of, but only because someone told me, so probably more than once]) keeps getting stuck in it. It also has gotten bushy and tangly enough to officially support the weight of a thin stainless steel fork as of Tuesday. Or maybe I just got lucky and stuck it in a good spot on Tuesday. I've been trying for a few weeks now. For some reason that's a milestone to me. Now I'm waiting for it to grow long enough that I can tie a hair in a knot and support the weight of a 4oz lead teardrop sinker. I don't know if I'll make it that long but it would be pretty cool.

Anyway... maybe I'm just growing up but I guess it's important to embrace the elements of ourselves that we sometimes question or attempt to change. It's cool to not be perfect and it's okay to make mistakes as long as you learn from them. And if you're comfortable with yourself, other people will be comfortable with you too. I feel like I'm 90% there. I'm still pretty embarrassed that I can't tie my shoes, laugh out loud when people say "butt", and that I have to watch a youtube instructional video in slow motion when I need to tie a half-windsor. But eventually I guess I'll grow into this just like the beard grew into my face. And it'll probably get on my nerves before I appreciate it.

So as scratchy and fluffy and big and crazy as it is, it's on my face and I guess it's there to stay a little while longer. And I'm pretty okay with this. Beards are, indeed awesome. And I feel slightly more awesome today too. Hooray.