I think I’m going to give myself a pat on the back…

Normally, I am always pointing out my flaws and mistakes, I’m always eager to tell others why I’m bad at this and that, how I’m not that worth it, etc. As you know, I’m trying to change that this year and, you know what? It’s getting better!

I try to be a positive person, even when my first reaction is that of cursing and complaining and criticising… Well, I’m trying to change that, and I normally manage to, after I’ve taken a moment and a deep breath. Silver linings, dude, silver linings. Every experience is a lesson to be learnt and that’s how I’m trying to live these days.

The past few days have been interesting. For instance, the talent show I mentioned in my last post. Even if I didn’t perform, it was a difficult thing for me to do: I would be a bit on the spotlight, there would be an audience, I was surrounded by people funnier than me and there was a camera recording stuff. All good ingredients for a terrible cocktail. I did it, I even made a couple of comments longer than a monosyllable (pat on the back).

A few days earlier, it seemed we had a computer virus at work. I had spent my whole day working on some intricate design for an invite and there was a chance I could lose it, all because a fake email with an attachment. Of course, I thought: damn, I’m going to lose literally a day’s work, that sucks. You know what? I could have worried, and get annoyed or anything like that. Instead, my reaction was: that’s a bummer, I should have forwarded the file to my boss as I thought of doing and almost did, but didn’t in the end (main reason being: c’mon, you just want to show off your pretty design) but I can always scan the test copy I printed and re-do it from there. So it wasn’t all lost. True, I would have to re-do it again, but I wouldn’t have had to start from scratch.

As it turned out, my computer wasn’t affected in the end… Or hasn’t been so far, who knows if something will happen at some point!

I was actually impressed with my reaction. It’s not that I wasn’t bothered, of course I was bothered, I was actually annoyed, but since I couldn’t do anything about it, I decided to think of ways of fixing it, so I didn’t panic or over think it. Kudos to me (pat on the back).

Fast forward a bit to this last weekend.

For months, I’ve been thinking about having a haircut. My hair has been long, very long for ages, and it took me long to grow it, that every time I’ve thought of cutting it I quickly decided it wasn’t worth it.

About a month ago, I trimmed the ends myself, maybe 4 centimetres or so. I grabbed the scissors and snip, snip, chopped off a bit. It was fine and you couldn’t really see it.

On Saturday, I saw a friend had dyed part of her hair purple and posted pictures on Facebook. I loved it. She used to have longer dark hair, but came back after her honeymoon with a pixie sort of haircut, and dyed blonde. I felt the itch in my fingers. I knew exactly where the scissors were stored. Could I do it? I used to trim the ends all the time when I was at uni, so maybe I could do a proper haircut? After all, I’m keeping my hair curly now, so any mistakes would be pretty unnoticeable. Would I do it?

I’m not as crazy as to just go for it, so I took my phone and searched for tutorials on how to cut your own hair in YouTube. After seeing a few of them, I decided to try it.

I simply thought: you know what? Hair grows back. That was my mantra. I was going to do it and I could love it or hate it. As long as I left it long enough for a ponytail, it would be fine and if it ended up horrible, I could always go to a hairdresser’s and ask them to fix it. If it was unfixable, well, hair grows back.

I went to the bathroom and did the ponytail cut. I followed some instructions from a video, but made a mistake there. I didn’t want to cut my fringe, so I should have made the ponytail at the back of my head. Instead, I did it at the front, so the fringe is shorter than I wanted it. Meh, whatever. Grabbed the scissors, closed my eyes (metaphorically speaking), and chop, off it went. Since my hair was a bit damp but also a bit straight, to make the cutting easier, it didn’t look great, so I decided to tie it in a ponytail straightaway. I would deal with the result later.

Uh-oh, as it turned out, it was quite short. I could make a sort of pigtail, but only grabbing the back of the hair, or the fringe, not all of it. Ah, well, life happens.

The next day, I washed it properly and decided to straighten the fringe and leave the rest curly and… Well, I wasn’t a fan, but whatever, hair grows back.

To be honest, the couple of pictures I took and shared had a good reception amongst friends and family, and when people have seen me they’ve all told me it looks great. Bless them!

What’s really interesting is the looks on people’s faces when I tell them I cut it myself. The most common response is “wow, you’re brave” and I think: maybe I am, but meh, hair grows back so whatever.

I think it’s good to not be afraid of trying new things. Sometimes it will all go according to plan, whilst others it will be a mistake, but you can learn from it anyway. Next time you’ll know what you don’t like.

Personally, I’m still not sure about the haircut, but now I know how to do it next time (ponytail at the back, at the back!) and I know I can even go a bit shorter if I want to. I really want to try some quiff-like style. Maybe this current haircut is just a transition one… I miss having short hair and be ready in 5 minutes every time. I’m travelling to Madrid next week, where haircuts are cheaper, so I might go for it. We’ll see…

After all, meh, hair grows back.