Just one more thing

Abbey said I looked like a Wookiee.

"What do you mean?" I asked, knowing fully well what she meant. I must have looked a little hurt, too, judging from her facial expression.

"Your hair," she replied. I know you like your hair long. What you don't realize is you look better when it's short. When it's long," she sighed, almost imperceptibly, as if her internal dialogue leaked for a moment, "you look like a chubby Shaggy."

Ouch. That hurt, even though I knew it. I had said it to myself, though couched in more gentle, rationalizing tones. I have reached uncomfortable conclusions. My hairline is apparently losing a war with my forehead, because it is in serious retreat. I play down the extent in order to protect my fragile sense of self. More and more I find myself Googling things like "fashion tips men receding hairline" and "awesome look large male forehead."

Acquiescing this fight to shorter hair styles was more about self-preservation than just a haircut. My ego has been tied to my hair since my twenties. My hair has always been straight and thin- so, in decades past when it was not as laughable for men to do so than it is now, I got perms. I colored to add fake highlights. I used Aqua Net. Whatever it took to give it a bit more lift.

As fads came and went and I was determined to rock a natural look, I would try simply not washing it. I had friends with dark, black hair for whom this look would melt the underwear off of people, regardless of gender or sexual orientation. It looked so damn good on them. On me, I just looked unwashed. So I embraced mousse, wax, spit, sand, anything that added some depth but in a way that looked completely nonchanlant and devil-may-care. usually my devil-may-care look deflated around 3:30 in the afternoon.

Then, the dreaded widow's temple; and after, the ever-so-slight balding patch in the back. Crap. I was really hoping to avoid male pattern baldness.

So I fought back in the only way I knew how: pretend it wasn't happening. But my wife has finally drawn the line in the sand. Ignoring is no longer the cool posture it once was. Now it makes me look unkempt and, I suspect, somewhat creepy.

Funny the myriad ways we reject change, from small daily rebellions in the bathroom to not-so-smart sweeping decisions like sticking with careers we not only hate, but which clearly hate us back.

Take, for instance, what I like to call the "just one more thing" phenomenon. The one last unchecked thing on your list that stops you from making important changes in your life. I do some work (ok, let's call it "career development") from home on my laptop most mornings- I am a big-time early riser. When it's time to confront my new plan- spending some of that early morning time in a gym a couple of days a week- the last thing on my mental list always becomes very, very important. "But I need to get this graphic cropped just right!" I'll be thinking to myself. "One more revision, and I'll reach a great stopping point!"

The stopping point gets reached- the gym doesn't. And now that I see the pattern, I realize all my life the conscious plan of reaching my full (or at least fuller) potential has been undermined by this one tiny little snag, the nagging thing at the end of that ever-present mental list of rationalizations.

It's interesting how I discovered the presence of this bug in my programming. I had two objectives to accomplish during today's lunch break: get a haircut, and grab my favorite cup of coffee, sold at a place that happens to be right down the block from this new salon I'm checking out.  I get the haircut, no problem. Then I leave and realize I "have" to do this one last thing, get a cup of delicious coffee, before heading back to the office.

It was inexplicably difficult to walk that two extra blocks to go get one of my favorite treats ever.
Once the cup was secured, suddenly the trip back seemed like a complete delight. My step was easy, the office approached with startling quickness. Why was this suddenly so easy?

I think because I have had this mental block for a long, long time, and I just discovered it totally by accident. It was a weird realization, a kind of "Manchurian Candidate" moment. Here was incontrovertible evidence that the beasties that control me- opioid receptors, bacteria, whatever- were large and completely in charge.

I encourage you to root out your own mental lists of excuses and procrastination routines, tear them up and throw them away! Some of us need to learn what it means, for the first time, to be completely in charge of your lives. It's not an easy path, but getting started is half the battle.