Hi, Friend.
“Bzzzzzzzzz!”, goes the razor, and a huge chunk of hair falls to the ground. I touch the back of my head and squeal. The buzzing sound continues, and I feel cool air on my neck. I angle my neck and glance down - holy shit, that’s a lot of hair. “Have you ever had a client whose hair never grew back?”, I ask Allison, only half joking. She laughs, and shakes her head. My hairstylist is a beautiful blonde, rocking intricate ink on her arms. I found her by Googling “best place to get an undercut” and “best funky haircuts in Toronto”. Now I am at Textur Studio, Pinterest board in hand. “Shave my head” has been on my bucket list for a while, until it finally caught my attention on a perfectly ordinary unremarkable day. And so I knew it was time. This IS how the next goal often manifests itself. One day you hear a thing, you see a thing, you consider doing a thing - something you considered and released dozens of times - but that day it just… lands differently. It tingles your skin, it makes you go “hmmmmm”, and that’s it. It’s like falling in love. Don’t question the tingle. Creative interpretation of my own goals can be fun, fun, fun! When I realize that my goal does not actually say “shave your ENTIRE head”, I’m even more excited. And yes, I am all about the loopholes, if need be. As I share my insight with the world of the internetz, some people are skeptical. “You are only cheating yourself!” “Just shave it, and get it over with!”. “You know what you meant, so pony up! Whole head or bust!”. These must be the same people who say that listening to books does not count as reading, and that walking a marathon does not count as completing a marathon. They also probably do not have many friends. I have never really seen items on my bucket list as absolute. It’s not a list of ways of suffering for the sake of suffering. It has not been notarized and finalized by a lawyer. It breathes and evolves. As someone who has never been experimental with my hair, I am excited. What can I do with this? Ohhhh - the possibilities are endless. Before sitting in the chair myself, I pat the sofa beside me. “Grab a seat, I have a bit of a monologue”. Allison smiles, intrigued, and obliges. I am going to be her strange appointment of the day. I pull up my blog, and tell her about the bucket list, and how I recently made the realization that “shave my head” goal had some play room, and that’s where she, Allison, is going to come in. Laughing, she agrees. The guidelines we settle on: 1. There WILL be shaving of head, and 2. It WILL be a significant amount of hair. I put away my laptop, settle in, and Allison gets out the razor. And now we are right back where we started this letter - at the “Bzzzzzzz!” sound and hair on the floor. As Allison buzzes and cuts, she wants to know more about my bucket list. What else have I checked off this year? What is still on the list? I tell her about the powerlifting competition a week ago, and my speaking gig earlier this year, as well as about some of my past races that started out as items on my bucket list. “You know”, she shares, “I’ve always wanted to shave my entire head!”. She is sporting a short do, and I almost exclaim: “But it’s already so short, what’s the big deal!”, when I stop myself. It’s all relative. It’s all relative. It’s all relative. Whoever says “it’s just hair!” is missing the point. Of course, it’s just hair. It does not hurt. It is all temporary. It grows back. All changes boil down to “what kind of person am I?”. Big changes are all identify shifts. And changing one’s identity is scary. Am I a kind of person to get a funky haircut? I’ve never been that kind of person before. But I am only ONE haircut away from being that person, and then… what else could I do? What else could I be capable of? I talk about this with clients often. Change often takes time. But SOME changes can be FAST, and FUN, and MEANINGFUL. You are only ONE workout away from not being sedentary. ONE salad away from “I never eat vegetables” no longer being true. ONE haircut away from someone with a funky haircut.
Hugs,
