I cut my hair

An artist at work has a second job at a huge hardware store. He said that a number of his co-workers there had come to work with their heads shaved or with very short buzzcuts. They tried to cut their own hair, botched the job, and were forced to shave their heads.

I think it's because these young guys had never had a bad haircut. I went from age 8 to age 26 without ever getting even one good haircut. Those were ugly years. Every haircut a humiliation. You'd have to go to school the next day. These guys today jump in and start cutting like they didn't know you could fail.

The first time I cut my own hair, I took it very slow. I did it over a period of days. When in doubt, I did nothing. I let it go and came back to it after giving it a day or two. And it came out perfectly fine.

This last haircut a few days ago, I tried to do the same thing. I had some electric clippers arrive in the mail. I knew how they worked. There was a one inch guide. You snap it on the thing and it wouldn't let you cut hair to less than one inch in length.

But I didn't entirely trust it and even if it worked, maybe one inch was shorter than I imagined. 

I tried to go at it slowly, but just had to go ahead and trust it. I cut off a huge amount of hair. I had a ponytail and my hair was very long. What was left after cutting it looked fine. Cut the back and the sides to one inch then used scissors to cut the top. I wanted some of it a little longer so there would be enough to cover two places where my hairline had receded. 

I gave myself a caesar. Even length all around, combed forward on the top without a part. A short fringe on the front pushed up to one side so it wouldn't look like bangs.

The haircut is named for Julius Caesar who cut his hair this way and combed it all forward in hopes of concealing his receding hairline. That was over 2,000 years ago and people still talk about the guy's hair loss.

I did a much better job than he did.