beard care – Go Retire Psychiatrist

Well, I decided it was time to return to the circle beard after over 6 months of struggling to grow a full beard. I have too many potholes. I think it takes as much time and trouble to have a beard as it does to shave every day.

I found a web site about how some face shapes work better with specific beard styles. The author suggested measuring your face. I tried it. I measured my face length, forehead, cheekbones, and jaw line. The measurements are applied such that they classify you as having a face that is shaped: square, rectangle, round, oval, diamond, triangular, or like a heart.

According to the article, the bottom line is that I have a square-shaped face. So, I’m a square dude and what that means is that I should stick with a circle beard (mustache and goatee).

This makes sense because that’s what I used to have. See my blog post and YouTube video from 3 years ago, “Facial Hair and the Masked Worker.” I used to keep it stubble short so I could pass the fit test for the N95 respirator at the hospital when I was working as a psychiatric consultant.

Because I’m retired from the hospital, fit testing is no longer an issue. On the other hand, I think the circle beard will be less trouble to groom.

I finally trimmed my beard the other day. I can’t just let it go forever, even if I don’t have much. I was starting to look like an old prospector.

I looked at a YouTube video of a guy who had a huge beard and he used a hair clipper without a guard and a tiny, gold-plated razor. He demonstrated a 4-step procedure starting with trimming the flyaways from the sides of his beard, which he called the “walls.”

That’s for guys with walls. I have something more like café curtains.

I used a regular beard trimmer with guards, a pair of scissors—and trepidation. I trimmed with downstrokes, not up which would lop the length I need to help hide the potholes. Sena told me to trim it some more after I thought I did an OK job. She offered to trim it for me. I ran away.

After I came back, I trimmed a lot more. Sena said it looked “100%” better. I think that depends heavily on the room lighting and how I hold my head. I exposed my turkey neck, which I forgot about because it was hidden. Oh well, it grows back.