So it turns out, #9: Beards are self-improvement magic?
Wherein we discover the joys of proper self-care. Also, googly eyes.
Hi,
So here are some things I’ve been thinking about over the past few days:
Perhaps the real beard growing advice was the friends we made along the way
So, I’m currently attempting to grow a beard. Since the start of The Thing, different people have found different ways to cope. For me, I’ve made a lot of cocktails, organized a bunch of old junk, and, yeah, decided to try to grow a beard.
In multiple attempts, I’ve had very limited success growing facial hair, with results that could be best described as…notional. I’ve given myself the following intervals to grow beards:
Multiple winter vacations
A full twice-across-America road trip
A month of working as a government contractor where one of my clients, a retired Navy chief, gave me “beard leave” on the official justification of “let’s see what happens”
And let’s say that my luck was…minimal.
So this time I’ve consulted the great Googles in search of wisdom, and, well, most of it is something like this…
It turns out that most of the advice you can find on the internet about beard-growing is actually, well, general life advice recast as beard-growing advice. If you didn’t want to click on the video above because of its “time traveling Civil War general turned Direct-to-Consumer influencer” aesthetic, just look at this beard-growing tips list from The Art of Manliness:
First and Foremost: Just Be Patient
Sleep Well, Eat Right, Exercise
Increase Your Testosterone [and it turns out that the best way to do that is to Sleep Well, Eat Right, and Exercise]
Take Care of the Skin Underneath
Use the Right Beard Care Products
In other words, I think beard-growing is essentially the free sample of lots of systematic programs of life improvement. If your program is helping, you’ll see real improvement relatively quickly. And if you see real improvement in your beard, maybe you’ll want to retain the life changes, for the long run, that made you look Really Cool.
(Note, your humble correspondent is already aware of the beard-growing digression in Cryptonomicon, and is choosing very much to avoid engaging with it at this time for fear of descending into self-parody.)
The Only Good April’s Fools This Year:
This year, the Overwatch team launched a genuinely funny April’s Fools…
[Disclosure: I used to work for Activision Blizzard]
Enjoy these joyful animals!
Some animals are enjoying their people having more time to take them out:
Others are just cool staying in:
And aquariums are realizing that This Is Their Moment:
But these animals aren’t just up to good — they’re trying to STEAL OUR SPACE SHIPS, per this NASA employee:
Other news:
“The Pepsi DNA finds its origin in the dynamic of perimeter oscillations”
Next time, on Dave Kasten:
If you distill gin to the point where it has no gluten in it, is it Kosher for Passover?
Let’s say yes.
Disclosures:
Views are my own and do not represent those of current or former clients, employers, friends, or my cat.
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