Adventures in Narcissism.

Greetings, readers! As you may be able to tell from my lack of posts, I had another big paper due this week. I've had little time for anything else, but I did take advantage of the 10 minutes it takes my ultra-slow printer to spit out 10+ pages in order to hunt for some old photos. My mission: find pictures of myself with long hair and/or without glasses.

The reason? I have had glasses since 3rd grade and some variation of the haircut seen below since winter '08:

I really like having short hair- probably because my mother never let me cut my hair short when I was kid:

This is ca. 1983, I think. My mother owes my sister an apology for that outfit.

However, as those of you with shorter hair know, the downside is maintenance. If your hair grows as fast as mine, you really need to get it cut every 6-8 weeks, or you enter the dreaded Awkward Growing-Out Phase (AGOP). I've awlays been pretty diligent about it.

Then, as you may recall, I decided to run a marathon. As it got closer and closer, every other aspect of my life got more and more negelcted. This included haircuts. I was so focused on the marathon that I totally failed to realize my hair had grown out until I saw this finish-line photo:

When I saw this, I realized that I had not only reached AGOP, I had almost surpassed it. I figured I might as well let it keep growing and see what happens. At this point, my hair is rapidly approaching the longest its been since my last serious growing-out experiment, which took place in 1999:

 I kind of liked this haircut, but I got sick of spending 10+ minutes blowdrying every morning. I had it cut back to chin-length very shortly after this picture was taken. I suspect that the same thing will happen with this growing-out experiment, but we'll see.

As rarely as I have been seen with long hair in the past 15 or so years, I have almost never been seen without glasses. Like I said, I got glasses for the first time in 3rd grade, and I've never minded them. I experimented with contacts once in '00 or '01, but I wore them for such a brief time that I can't even find any representative pictures. Ultimately, I didn't like the time they added to my morning routine (see blowdrying, above) and, since I don't mind wearing glasses, I ditched them.

Then, I decided to do a triathlon. As I've mentioned over the past few weeks, I am working on my swimming and I'm going to start biking outside in the spring. Doing these things with glasses is a real problem. At the pool, I can't see anything at all. On the bike, I can't wear sunglasses because my only prescription pair won't stay on my face. So, I decided that its time to try contacts again. I have an appointment Monday. I may even consider laser surgery, something I swore I would never do.

This all makes me a little nervous. I am so used to seeing myself with glasses that I don't really like how I look without them. Thus, the hunt for pictures to ease my fear. After going through several boxes, I finally came across this:



This is one of my senior portaits, taken in 1996. It never appeared in the yearbook; I chose one with my glasses for that. I only got this one to appease my mother and grandmother, who begged for a glasses-free shot. This particular moment in '96 was also a time when I was in the midst of another short-lived experiment with long hair (no pun intended).

I really did not like this picture at the time, but now I don't think its half bad. Good thing, because I may look like this again in a few months. Time to pull out the prom dress again...