At Laralee’s suggestion, I decided to grow out a beard. For about two weeks I trimmed my neck hair and let the rest run wild. This morning, as I evaluated it, I realized that I simply can’t grow a sweet beard: the hair on the side of my face is too sparse, so even though it had grown a reasonable quarter-inch, it looked like it was barely five o’clock shadow.
I took a razor to it, but of course had to experiment with a few options first. Here’s the Amish look:
And the “chin stubble”:
But in the end, I just went back to the clean-shaven look:
Maybe my goatee will make a reappearance someday, but I’m pretty sure the beard won’t.