Thanks Alan and Leopard… still letting everything go and you know what, it's entering the mangy / scruffy stage but somehow I don't care so much this time. It feels kind of liberating in a way - in a society that pressures you to be perfect all the time, there's some kind of bent appeal in intentionally making yourself look "sub par". Still not sure if it's going to work out as a full beard in the end, but as an experiment it's well worth seeing through. Also as you said, knowing there's a couple of good fallback options takes a lot of there pressure off.

Back in a few days with the 2 week update, unfortunately I don't have a lot of time to follow everyone's journeys on the board atm, but all the best to you guys!