Bye-bye beard: The end of No-shave November 2018

I participated in No-Shave November for the fifth straight year. On Halloween, I shaved my face and neck and then let my beard grow for the next 30 days.

It wasn’t a shave-free month, unlike last year, when I trimmed the hair on my neck with my beard trimmer only. I shaved my neck as I did the first three times I participated. Also, I trimmed the tops of my cheeks for the first time ever, which produced different results. I did a great job the first time, creating clean lines from my sideburns to my mustache, but I took off too much the second time. I didn’t trim my cheeks after that. The hair grew back, but it looked weird for the last few weeks, as you can probably see in the pic.

As I say every year, beards are not my thing, but I will endure one for one month for a good cause. (Speaking of the cause, I learned that the goal of No-shave November is to raise awareness of all types of cancer. I was under the impression it raised awareness for prostate cancer. That’s the goal of Movember, which focuses on mustaches instead of beards.) My beard becomes annoying at some point, and this year it happened on November 18. It happened suddenly, too, while I was chilling on the couch watching a basketball game. One minute, my beard was the farthest thing on my mind. The next minute, I could not wait to shave it off.

My plan last night was to stay up until midnight and buzz my beard off. However, I hit the hay early because of a cold, so my 2018 beard received a 10-hour stay of execution.

With my beard trimmer charged, I buzzed my beard down to short stubble—everything except the hair of my mustache. That’s right, I decided to keep a seventies porn ‘stache:



It’s just for a few days, until I shave again. However, it will live forever in the pictures of my nephew’s baptism, which happened today.