Photo of the Week

That’s a lotta salt & pepper for one year’s worth of growth! Can’t wait until I can cut off the rest of the brown.

General Discussion
Almost exactly one year ago, I decided to stop dying my hair. It wasn’t really because I had any strong desire to have salt & pepper hair or anything like that, it was just that I was having to touch up my roots every three weeks or so, I wasn’t very good at it (so I always had white spots showing through even right after a dye job), and I was just tired of all the work of maintaining my color. I’ve always said I’d never get salon color due to the harsh process and chemicals, so when maintaining it myself got to be too much, it was time to quit.

I suppose you could say I “decided to let myself go”, which is true in a sense. Just over a year before that, I decided to grow out my high-maintenance pixie cut, so within the span of two years I did let the high-maintenance parts of my hair care “go”. And while I do have to work a little harder to keep my longer, natural hair moisturized (because my salt & pepper hair is quite a bit more wiry than the henna-coated colored hair), it’s nice not to have to see a hairdresser every 6-10 weeks (handy, considering I’m currently between hairdressers), and really nice not to have to schedule every third Saturday night for a three-hour dye marathon.

There really haven’t been any downsides to letting the color grow out for me. I like my multi-hued natural color quite a bit, and I haven’t gotten any negative comments on it. I still need to find a good style and a good stylist. But considering I just cut a bit too much off the top trying to thicken my bangs, the former is going to take awhile (grow, grow, grow!). As for the latter…well, I’m enjoying not spending money on my hair right now (aside from care products and hair toys, which I need to slow down on), so that will probably be a month or two down the road as well (though I have an idea of the kind of cut I want, generally speaking).

It is kind of odd dealing with two different textures of hair. As I mentioned, the dyed hair is a bit thicker consistency, so it has different waves and maintains moisture slightly better than the natural hair, which is wiry and a bit straighter. I should be able to chop a good chunk of the remaining color off fairly soon without going *too* short, and that will help me pick a nice style to grow back out. I’m thinking long layers in the back with face-framing layers in the front, but we’ll see. Definitely layers though, because I have a lot of hair, and it gets heavy without layering.

In any case, despite the fact that growing out the color is sort of stalling my length grow-out (so I can cut the color off sooner), I’m glad I decided to start the process last year instead of waiting until my hair was much longer. I think it’s going to be really pretty when it’s all gray and longer,

Currently Reading
I’ve been slacking on the reading again, but I did go pick up my comic book pull list the other day, and wow, do I have a lot of catching up to do! I also have several samples in my kindle app to check out, an a TBR pile that is…well, robust.

I’m working on figuring out how to add a set reading time back to my schedule since I’m finally pretty well caught up with my publishing task backlog. Stay tuned!

Video Highlight
I’ve been following Renee for awhile now – I started watching her videos on growing her gray hair out, but she’s just got a fun personality and a couple cute dogs too. This is a house tour she did that I thought was fun. Enjoy!
httpss://youtu.be/HLj7Vmvbiqs

Song of the Week
This seemed appropriate for the week’s theme.
httpss://youtu.be/PgrIAIHTho8

Pop Quiz!
Do you change up your hairstyle a lot, or do you always wear the same cut/style?

My longest running hairstyle was the pixie cut, because I really couldn’t do much else with it. I’m going to get my hair cut again in a few weeks, and I think I’ll trim a good couple inches off, and maybe try some face-framing layers just to change things up a bit.

Post Round-up
The Writer’s Desk (last updated: Feb. 19, 2022)

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