PANDEMIC RETROSPECTIVE

We’re approaching a full year of living in the pandemic for the western world. It’s still going and despite the creation of vaccines, it won’t be ending anytime soon. Yet, as human beings, we love to look back on events when come up on arbitrary milestones, like a whole year.

The picture you see above is what my facial hair looked like in the middle of May, two months after everyone started working from home. If you can remember that far back, it was still a very scary time for everyone and people were still very reluctant to venture out. Since I was basically stuck at home, I decided to grow out my facial hair from the beginning. What you’re seeing above is about two months of growth, which is sad because I know some dudes who can look like that after a week of not shaving. I have some weak-ass hairs on my upper lip, which gave me a tired looking “moustache”. The chin part looks ok but the abundance of white hairs makes me look like an old dude because I guess I am an old dude now.

I would have never stopped shaving unless we were in the pandemic and I feel like a lot of men made the same decision. I kinda looked like a hobo. Growing it out was fascinating to me though. At beginning, it didn’t feel that great. It felt prickly and uncomfortable at times. When the hair got a certain length though, it felt softer and easier to deal with. I got into this habit of playing with the chin part of it. Sometimes I’d just rub my hands along my beard because it was just so strange to feel all that facial hair. It was a novelty.

It wasn’t very long after this picture was taken that I shaved it all off. It just wasn’t me and with the warmer weather coming, I felt it make the summer less cool. It was quite fun seeing all that long facial hair in my sink when I shaved it off. I wonder if I should try doing this again to celebrate a whole year of pandemic living!