Watch Joe Grow

2009-01-26T21:11:00.001-05:00

2008-09-14T21:41:00.001-04:00

day 15

2008-07-19T13:10:00.004-04:00

Hey, sorry for missing yesterday.

It seems my initial beard spurt has declined a bit. We're at a break.

Here it is anyway. Covered in sweat.

Day 13

2008-07-17T14:12:00.002-04:00

Had some epic growth today. I didn't expect to see so much change in such a short period of time.

Stay tuned.

Day 12

2008-04-23T01:08:00.002-04:00

Short and brief because I'm backed up on freelance gigs I never should have taken to begin with:

As you can see it's coming in nicely. The neck shaving trick worked as it's all blending into a nice full form with no mess. I can tug on the hair on my jawline and get it between my fingers. For those who wonder what this means, it's that I defy the law of only growing 6 inches of hair a year. In two more weeks it's liable to be down to the nips.

Day 11

2008-04-22T02:09:00.003-04:00

So I finally missed a day of beard growth (and this post for the 21st is coming in quite late since it's over two hours into tuesday already). Not even a photo to show for my actions. There is no excuse to justify the lack of posting, I simply spent an entire day drinking myself into a belligerent stupor and passing out on a friends floor. Fortunately I'm from the mentality that a blog is a horribly juvenile place to discuss the many complexities of human emotion and the many ways you try to cure them with alcohol.

I'm finally starting to see some real growth, and it's about time. The next couple of days are going to get shaggy. Today it kind of has that same feel a trimmed shag carpet might have on your face. It's short but not stubbly, it's firm but soft. Overall it's feeling great with the weather.

This whole process really made me realize how much my beard was a part of me. Not in the, I can't possibly be me without a beard or I just wouldn't be me, but it was a physical extension of myself. Shaving my beard was like somebody getting a nose job and realizing their face was fine all along. I think I finally took into consideration people saying that I was hiding my face behind a beard and bought into it for a second. When in reality my beard was a part of my face, no different than the skin on my chin.

This post isn't anything significant and I hope people aren't losing interest. This week will have some videos and more beard related articles for your enjoyment.

I'm not going to generally ask people to comment on this blog but I'm pretty curious who's reading this and what they think, so it would be really good if people left some comments to give me some feedback. I've never been much one for blogging so the whole thing is pretty new to me, I'd like to hope I'm not boring anybody with this, or that no one's reading at all heh.

Day 9

2008-04-19T14:31:00.005-04:00

Day two of culture shock and I had a surprise visit from my old roommate chris vert visiting campus for the culture shock festival everybody hates to love. I decided he should take today's photo with me since he's seen my beard at it's best and worst times over the years. An interesting fellow, chris and I had gone to high school together without ever hanging out. When he transfered to purchase he asked if i'd move into an apartment on campus with him. The kids main activities were shaving off all his body hair, walking around naked while eating cereal, smoking pot, and performing cunnilingus on various girls he met that day.

As for me, I'm still in the slow season where nothing has rapidly started to form. Since I shaved my neck, if you look at me from the side it appears that I purposely tried to form a jawline with my facial hair. In a couple days everything should be balanced out and it'll be looking much better.

The one thing I noticed about this blog is it makes the time since not shaving seem insignificant. Tomorrow I finally hit the double digits though!

Day 8

2008-04-18T13:16:00.003-04:00

Here we are, day 8. I just spent a shirtless morning in the woods running, climbing hills, and taking mud baths for a video project.

When I washed all the mud from my hair and face the water was brown. yum.

So today's going to be a short post since my school is holding a two day festival called culture shock this weekend. It's an annual tradition where every year for months students complain about how they hate culture shock and it's stupid and it's no fun and they don't want to go, only to show up and have a drunk blast. Think of it as having to pull a kid by the hair into a candy store.

I generally go with the candy drops on the rows of paper.

Down to business, beard growth has slowed down a bit. No real change from yesterday. In a couple of days it should get pretty shaggy and there will be much more to discuss. I'm still hoping to get that chart up, but I'm pretty forgetful.

It's weird having my facial hair be stubbly and itchy. It feels like I can strike a match off my cheek. I'm used to having it be soft and cushiony, able to absorb the shock of even the most cheapshot punches.

Stay tuned

Day 7

2008-04-17T13:17:00.003-04:00

Finally shaved today!

My goal is to trim the beard as little as possible, but whenever growing a beard I generally have to shave the neck a couple times in the beginning to balance out the hair growth. The hair on my neck generally grows in much faster and thicker than the hair on my face, so I shaved it down just to let it all grow in a bit more balanced.

I'm pretty glad it's finally starting to settle in, I no longer feel like a 16 year old boy anymore.

Unfortunately i'm shooting a short video response tomorrow for a class. In the first project I had my full beard so now we have to write in a cover up for where it has gone. Hopefully the coverup won't include shaving again.

Also sometime this week I'm going to try and post the video of me shaving my beard. It's actually quite funny in retrospect.

Day 6

2008-04-17T00:25:00.000-04:00

Hey, sorry my update for the 16th is coming in so late, wednesdays are usually busy days for me.

I'm going to try and start having my posts in before 8:00 every night to keep a good sense of continuity going. I think it'll also be good practice for me to try and keep good on such a prolonged commitment.

The stubble is forming into scruff, it's lately looking less like I forgot to shave and more like I'm actually growing a beard in. This is kind of the most awkward stage of the beard, especially if you have a job where presentation is a big part of the job. In a couple more weeks it's generally long enough that it's an understood beard and people will be okay with it; but for now people have no qualms assuming you should shave your beard for work, family functions, etc..

Luckily I'm a college student who's main source of income is freelancing odd-jobs and editing gigs, so by the time presentation matters the beard should be long enough that I don't feel obligated to shaving it off. I just have to hope that no spontaneous funerals, weddings, old relative birthdays happen.

I'm also a little concerned, as you see in the photo I have a cut from a water bottle cap that was frisbeed(?) into my face. It left me with a pretty good sized knick that i'm hoping won't result in a patch when it's done healing. That would put a pretty big damper on things.

It seems that since i've shaven my beard i've been getting hit in the face a lot more. I think it has to do with the vulnerability of having lost a very large shock absorber. In the past two weeks I've had several crowd surfers lunge into me, I've been punched in the face, and lastly I've been nailed by projectiles. A patch of skin could entirely ruin a nice, nearly full beard. Would definitely hinder the continuation of this blog and the possibility of entering competitions down the road.

-Joe

Day 5

2008-04-15T23:11:00.000-04:00

Today was a pretty good day with the growth of the beard.

It's starting to transition from stubble to whiskers, so in a couple more days it should start to fill in enough that you can see a light shading in the area the beard will take over.

You can kind of see this already in the goatee area below the lip. This isn't weird, that part of my face has always been the fastest growing part of my facial hair. You can tell that the soul patch portion of the beard will have two empty spaces around it, while the chin will be a prominent place of growth.

I'm going to try and upload a picture of my face this week and map out the growth areas into sections, I think it'll make explaining the outlines all the easier down the road.

I'm also going to try and show some facial-hair related articles from time to time. I'll be honest it would probably grow stale if I did it consistently, but if I come across something that strikes my fancy I'll include it with my posts. There's a lot of good stuff out there, usually funny pictures of people who have taken the time to sculpt beards for Beard and Mustache Competitions (which i'll probably also discuss, and perhaps even enter down the road).

So enjoy until tomorrow, I thought I'd end this post with one of my favorite beard related photos ever. It's a beard cap, it's amazing and over $200. I've wanted one since the first time i ever saw it.

The Start

2008-04-15T18:04:00.000-04:00

This was once Joe's beard.

I'm Joe and I made a terribly drunk mistake one night.

Now my beard is gone and my face is cold.

After three years of having a beard I was truly proud of, I find myself having to start from scratch, today being day five of being beardless.

I originally thought it would be nice to take a photo every day and have a personal track of my beard growth. It appears however that a good handful of people are also interested in seeing the development, so after thinking it over for a bit I thought it might be a nice experiment.

I wonder if the name will get me a large number of hits by accidental google searches.

For the sake of blogging I've decided to include with this post the first four days of beard growth, the fifth day (being today) will be a second post later.