It's been a while since I was active on this board, and I see that the organization of posts has changed a little. Although I've grown beards before, and although I'm fairly comfortable with the process, it still seems like this "new beard" section is the place to document my decision to "start over" and grow a fairly good-sized beard again. I already had a goatee








when, on May 30, I went away for a weekend trip, didn't shave for three days, and decided to just keep going. Here I am after about a week:

and here I am today (i.e., three weeks in):

As for what style I am shooting for, well, I like the thought of a fairly bulky, longish beard, and yet I also struggle with looking "ungroomed." In my case, this is mainly defined as not caring too much what it looks like from the lower cheeks down, but not liking when the beard bulks out too much on my upper cheeks. In other words, as far shape goes, I like the idea of some shag toward the bottom and then for the shape to sort of blend into the shape of my face/head higher up toward the top.This comes into play because my beard is pretty wiry, and try as I might I've never had the willpower to let it grow long enough on the sides to see if it would truly lie down, so I've usually gotten into a death spiral of trying to thin it out in that area, and just getting frustrated. I am SLIGHTLY more in the mood than usual to experiment with just letting it grow, possibly because I am now shaving my head altogether, and for some reason the fact that the beard is the only hair makes it easier to picture letting it get a little unrulier than usual. We shall see.
Here are a couple of examples of what appeals to me right now, roughly in increasing order of realism for my particular beard genes:



The above picture (of the ginger) is actually kind of a minor example of some things I DON'T like about my own beard. Realistically, this is what mine will look like before long, and I'll be frustrated that the sides aren't a little flatter/blended looking. Actually, I would be pretty happy with this guy's level of bulking on the cheeks; mine always seems to end up slightly bulkier than this.
But perhaps I'll end up with a yeard, who knows? (Ha ha, I won't.)
As for beards in general, I started growing facial hair a little bit after goatees became kind of de rigeur for a certain kind of rebellious type (late 1980s/early-mid 1990s). I dabbled in those, was clean shaven for four years in the military, and returned to goatees and, briefly, a heavily carved beard in the early 2000s. I started getting interested in a full beard probably through exposure (at this point, one is almost deterred by the overwhelming trendiness, but I live in a state where beards were always and probably will remain relatively standard, regardless of the activities of Brooklyn hipsters). I know one of my more recent influences relatively recently was constantly being barraged by images and enthusiastic comments from Andrew Sullivan, someone I'm a big fan of as a writer and thinker. If you only remember him from when he was an Iraq war booster, you might want to take another look. And even if you can't stand him intellectually, you have to admit he's got a good beard:

Anyway, I recall this is a good, positive community, and I look forward to sharing my journey, however it turns out.
Cheers!
