There’s no above or under or around it
For “above” is blind belief and “under” is sword to sleeve
And “around” is scientific miracle, let’s pick “above” and see

I enjoy the song Morph by Twenty One Pilots for a lot of reasons, most of which are completely unrelated to this blog. However, it occurred to me one day that the lyrics in the first verse apply to the slow and steady progression of building something for yourself and overcoming its challenges, like giving up or messing it up. People want things quickly, perfectly, easily. I get it!

But hair doesn’t work like that, and trying to get hair quickly, perfectly, and easily just leads to frustration and quitting, or an endless “poisonous progression” (Chlorine, lol) of more and more and more haircare products. One to get better hair. Another to pair with the first. A third to correct the new problem caused by the first two. A second set of what was the first and second, only a different brand. Repeat.

Getting dream hair is slow. Documenting it is slow. Getting those posts out is slow. This whole first year has felt like a long waiting game, unsure if the blog and effort to photograph the progress was truly worth it. After all, its kinda hard to notice half an inch’s growth a month, especially with hair that wants to wrap up into waves, beguiling its true length. In the thick of it, especially with health challenges, it was hard to notice anything. Until I compared the September photograph from last year with ones I had just taken a few days ago, and then the answer was obvious. Wow!

The pair of images I merged into a single one and it has become the banner for my blog’s homepage. In case you discovered this post by accident while browsing and haven’t visited my website yet, here’s the photo for you, 2025 on the left and 2026 on the right. As a random aside, I feel like my blog came 10 years too late; in the face of social media I feel like I can’t keep up. So I don’t. I just keep up with my own life and write a little about it.

It’s also hard if you try a new method and when you go to photograph it, your camera can’t pick it up. XD You wouldn’t know, but the image on the right is post-henna. This is partly because I chose a shade closest to my own hair color so that I could just focus on the health benefits to the hair shafts and to my scalp. This is also because, though it did actually change the color just a little bit–a metallic, copper glow when strong light hits it–my camera has never been able to pick up on effects like that, not even on my model horses (some of which are metallic, holographic, and pearlescent).

I often catch myself just wishing I had my long hair again already. But, then I remember that if I hadn’t gone on this semi-annoying journey of chopping it all off (which isn’t necessary, by the way!) and changing what I’ve been doing (which is necessary) by taking the good of the past and leaving the ineffective and damaging, I wouldn’t have the hair I have today. It’s the healthiest I’ve ever had and I wouldn’t change that for anything. Still, I wish I could just have the long hair to show off in my blog and maybe in some videos (that would definitely be more visible than this website, which basically no one reads). But it isn’t about the views. I want more people to see and read my site so they too can be inspired to care for their bodies better, but that takes time.

Like I wrote last year, I feel like I have to be brave because people aren’t interested in a blog with photos of short hair when the blog is about long hair. Yet, if I don’t document now, once I do have very long hair, people will want to go back and see what it was like. This is ultimately because people are curious to learn if my process might produce the same results for them. People are more willing to trust the process after seeing the final result. It’s just, I can’t retroactively document the journey once I’m at the destination. So for now I wait. I wait for my hair to keep growing, caring for it along the way. Meanwhile, getting some drafts out of the backlog so they can see the light of day.

Thanks for joining me 🙂