A History of the Hair Update

I received a request upon posting my last hair update to elaborate a little more on the story behind the tradition. To tell you the truth, the idea of documenting my hair's growth from month to month is fairly new and I'm not sure why it came to me, but taking pleasure in letting it get longer and longer is something I've been doing for a while.

When I entered high school in the Fall of 2002, I was a fourteen-year-old with a poofy blonde mop that brushed the tops of his ears and barely reached his eyebrows.



Over four years of high school, my hair went from shaggy to shoulder length and then beyond, so that by my graduation in 2006 I sported a very long ponytail that tumbled down my back, resting between my shoulder blades.



Then came my Freshman Year of college. For a series of reasons, none of which are very pleasant, I shaved my head in October of 2006. At the time I was concerned with appearing older and more masculine, but all I succeeded in doing was shocking my friends so much they didn't recognize me and making myself look fourteen.



I started growing it out again from there, and in August of 2008, nearly two years after I cut it, I began making hair updates, the first of which was actually posted in September of that year.

Back then, my hair was a chin-length blonde mushroom:



Growing it out again took a while, longer than I remembered from when I was in high school. Even last January, just one year ago, it was barely shoulder length:



Now it's roughly the same length it was before I cut it short, and I think I like it this way, possibly enough to let it get even longer. I'll have to be careful, though, lest I find it creeping down to my waist.

And there you have the history of the hair update.