In the last week and a half I have set out on a new project for myself. I call it “The Beard Reconstruction Project”. The aim of this project is to change the look and style of my beard and hence my look and style a bit. Stage 1 has been completed so far and I am now in stage 2.
What are these stages you may wonder? I will tell you…
By the way, here is a picture of the style that I have had for about 5 years now to the right –>
The style of facial hair that I have had for about 5 years.
Stage 1 is the outgrowth of enough facial hair so as to be free to style and change the look at will. Now one thing I have kept a constant for this project is I don’t want a bushy beard. I want it short and well kept looking. So I spent a little over a week just letting my face grow out. Here is the result of stage 1.
Results of Stage 1 of TBRP
At the end of stage 1 I cleaned up the bottom line to look less scraggly and then I shortened up the older beard hair to blend with the newer even better. With this stage done I now move on to the second stage.
Now last night I went drinking my best friends John, Pat, and Collin. They were so gracious as to point out that I looked like a 40 year old man. At one point they even told me that I looked like the spitting image of my father, though shorter and with a lot less gray hair.
Obviously I couldn’t stand for that. I am not forty and I want to attract women closer to my age of 25. So the old man part had to go. Luckily for me that is stage 2. Originally I was going to wait another week before I moved to stage 2 so that I had more hair to work with, but I am impatient and there are a few beautiful woman that I want to catch the eyes of. So I moved it up a week.
In stage 2 I plan on talking over my options with friends and family and with the beautiful woman of whom I previously spoke. I want to look good and I want to be attractive. I have been loosing weight, I am down to 315 from my high of 355 this summer. So as my wasteline evolves, so will my overall look and my beard has got to keep up with the times.
Now I have thought about a few options, that includes doing the a thin-line version of my old beard. To give it a younger, hipper look. I have always liked how my beard gave me a bit of a stronger looking jawline. The next option I thought of is to go for the mountain man look, but that was quickly dismissed as a very bad idea. Then I thought, hey, I can go back to my old goatee and not have the rest of the beard. Or I could have the goatee with the long sideburns. Maybe have the sideburns flare back a bit, wolverine-style. Another option that ran through my head is to go back to the old way, but actually have the hair follow my true jawline.
This is where I currently sit in stage 2.
So here I am debating all of this, but I still had the forty-year-old dilemma. As a comprimise I have decided to create a strong bottom edge to it so that my face looks less round. This, granted, makes it a bit closer to the model I was trying to evolve, but I don’t want to show of my flubby chin and I don’t want to look like this guy Dahlstrom from work (no offense, Dahlstrom, I just don’t want to copy your style). I have added a picture of the current look for stage 2 for all to see.
Now stage 2 is all about experimenting and researching. Stage 3 is more about field testing and tweaking. When I get to stage 4 I will have settled on a look. For now I await the opinion of the crowd. Until my next post, enjoy my pretty, partially shaven face.
-Pjerky
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Tags: beard, beards, facial hair, pjerky, styling
