A Walk In The P-Argh-K
First day of classes. . . WOW! I got to play with a camera worth… about 5x my car. Gorgeous piece of equipment, terrifying experience. The studios were set up with three different locations with three different lighting set ups each with its own model. I was particularly taken with the female model as she was stylish, sassy, and silvered haired. It struck me when I saw her how absent models like her are in the media landscape. We are not blessed with many women in their 50s who own their experiences in their own bodies enough to feel they are worthy and deserving of being seen and in front of the camera. She owned it! And was super lovely to boot.
Speaking of, I wore new shoes today, pretty white canvas shoes with stitched flowers that where begging to be worn for the first day of class. No time to wear them in (or so I told myself this morning, I’ve actually had them for months but hadn’t gotten around to wearing them), I put them on for the first time on a 7-hour day where I should have known I’d be on my feet for large chunks of it. I barely lasted the walk from the car to the classroom when blisters started forming and I began the graceful hobble of one who has made a terrible mistake. Classes hadn’t even started, and I had two perfect penny sized blisters forming on my heels. I had to sit in class, in pain for two hours before we had a break long enough for me to rescue my poor feet with band-aids. The rest of the day they were not getting any worse but definitely not getting any better. Now I must face the next week with wound on my feet, making walking painful, even if I wear more worn in and comfortable shoes.
A few days ago, I got my haircut. Getting a haircut had been long on my list and I had been putting off the research and booking of one for ages. When I walked past a reasonably empty hairdressers, I on a whim, went in and asked if they take walk ins. My thinking was that this saved me the hassle of the boring stuff and would get me immediate results. I discussed what I wanted (which wasn’t very much as I am not overly fussy with my hair, a trim and a redo of the style so as to not have flat hair) and sat in the chair. As any girl knows, hairdressers section your hair up to cut it. They start with the back, underneath section to determine the ideal length, then section by section they cut to match. This progressed, and I did not suspect a thing. . . until I noticed instead of cutting the mismatched bits, she was cutting the whole section again. . . which resulted in that whole section then not matching the previous one’s length.
Now I am not very experienced in hair, I had a blunt straight cut on waist length hair for the majority of my life and I do not ascribe to the every 6 weeks thing (it’s usually 6-8 months between- has been up to 2 years). This resulted in me accepting the proceedings happening behind my head as me simply not understanding how it was done. From what was long reasonably even hair down to between my shoulders, is now shoulder length with layers up around my ears, against a direct request against layers. It was only well into the whole drama that the hairdresser informed me (with no signage etc saying so) that I was in a barbershop and “we usually do men”. I was shown a mirror image of the back of my head and the resulting ducks tail shape dangling behind my back as repulsive to me as if it was an actual duck butt. This coupled with the heavy layers and shaping around the front also resulted in the duck butt also looking like a mullet. I was too scared to complain out of fear she would resume her hair-shrinking, sectioned passes again and I wanted enough hair left over to be able to fix.
Why did I tell you these mundane stories? These two stories and the subsequent fallout from them are a result of rather small and rather stupid decisions. Sure, they didn’t seem that bad at the time, but had I thought about it for even a moment longer then the present one I was deciding in, I could have foreseen the potential problem. No matter what we like to tell ourselves, shortcuts are not good for us. If it is a ‘shortcut’ that is good for you, it is simply efficiency. But a true shortcut? Those are usually ripping off something, somewhere. In my case, the shortcut to wearing my shoes has cost me the coming weeks ability to walk without being reminded of the trade-off for the little mermaid gaining feet (feeling like every step is being made upon sharp knives). The shortcut of getting a new haircut has cost me damage to my self-image until I can do what I originally should have done and booked in with a proper hairdresser to get it fixed.
It’s too easy to steal time from our future selves. In relation to my creative tasks, putting off the difficult ones (my novel is coming to mind) I am stealing time from my future self in order to avoid it. This is true even when putting it off might be a healthy choice at the time. This means future me will have even more to do later and will feel less likely to do it as it will become a mountain of a task to reach the word count. In an attempt at self-care in the present we can cause more headaches in the future. If I can learn to adopt self-care as a multi-tensed thing, I could care for myself in the present, while keeping a careful eye on what I do to my future self. In the best of situations, I could even look back and self-care for my experiences in the past, times when I needed a little bit of extra love and it wasn’t available. When choosing to do a thing to make current-self happy, a little bit of attention could save future-self so many problems. It is almost like I can forget future self is still me and needs the same level of care. This is not a lesson I will learn easy, nor will I remember it always, but with two very current lessons, I might at least have a chance to see the next one coming.
P.S. Thank goodness my bestie was here, she helped cut the duck butt hair cut to a much more attractive shaggy bob.
THE RUNDOWN
Art – (11/100)
Writing – Book: 1139 Blog: 13,187
Cooking – Emerald Pea Pasta, and Gazpacho Andalusia (19/285)
Music – (7/100)
Photography – This weeks challenge = #nofilter. that means minor exposure edits only and not to change anything else. The three model shots from today’s class fit the bill perfectly.
Craft – (12/100)