Long Hair, Don't Care.

It's been far too long since I let my hair down.

I got a taste of it when I was in San Francisco my last day. My friend Whitney and I walked from Fisherman's Wharf across the Golden Gate Bridge (nearly five miles) and it was a bit chilly by the water, so I let my long hair down.

It not only provided me immense warmth and protection from the wind, but I felt freed from months and months of buns and ponytails.

Don't get me wrong, I love me some big buns, but nothing beats the feeling at the end of the day when I take that pony out and let my long hair sashay across my back. Pair that with the unclipping of my bra and I am a happy woman. 

But then I got to thinking about possibly chopping it all off and donating it before my big move. 

New city, new look. 

That thought didn't last long. 

First of all, I love my mermaid hair. Ever since I heard Ed Sheeran so sweetly singing about a long-haired lover, "And you should never cut your hair cause I love the way you flip it off your shoulders..." and ever since I first watched in awe as Catherine Zeta Jones’ luscious locks were the only covering remaining after Zorro’s chop chop, I kept my hair long. 

What deterred me most from cutting my hair though was the mentality of me becoming somenone "new." Sure, I know I'm about to enter a foreign world, a future full of uncertainty and adulting, and there will be some major change for sure, but I'll remain the same woman, just grown up a little. 

My long hair isn’t my whole identity, but it’s something I really love about myself and I want to move to California confident and strong, and call it a security blanket (or a literal blanket on those cold San Fransciscan days), but it’s staying!  

Plus, it’s part of who I am, this tall exotic creature who struts down manestreet with her long hair blowing in the wind. 

One could almost say it’s part of my... hairitage.  

Springtime & My Time.

It appears as if I left Alaska in winter and I came back a few weeks later to spring.

It wasn’t the sunny weather though that signified the start of the new season. Nor was it the official date on the calendar, warming temperatures, melting ice, dry roads, sound of trickling water, and obvious change in the air.

No, I knew it was spring because my hibernating cat resumed her place at the window and is now longing to go outside.  

Big, mournful, pitiful meows that echo all of my desires to join her outside in the sun.  

It’s contagious, and I often find myself joining her there, promising her that the time is near.  

After my three week stint in California and my brief reconnection with the sun and how it felt on my Alaskan winter skin, my excitement for spring has only grown stronger.  

It’s not just the warmer weather that I’m looking forward to though, or the ditching of the layers and the unearthing of all my shorts and summer dresses. It’s the change of seasons and it’s appropeitness to the change I’m about to go through.

We talk of spring as a rebirth, a changing of the seasons, a time when the cold winter thaws and the hibernating landscape bursts forth with color and life. 

Not that I’ve been hibernating the last six months under a thick layer of ice and snow (but I sort of have), but I have been in a comfortable place and I’m about to shed those known layers, like the ice over this once frozen landscape, and step out into the light.  

So to speak.  

It’s time for a new change of seasons, and I couldn’t have picked a more opportune moment. 

It’s a change of seasons I’m ambivalent about, for sure, for I fight with the desire to stay in my comfort zone and the urge to go into the unknown.  

My response to people when they often ask why I would leave such a haven, a place where I’m successful and happy, is simply: a comfort zone is beautiful, but nothing ever grows there.  

I can feel it in my bones, like the trees thawing under the spring sun.  It’s been simmering for awhile now, this feeling of awakening. 

It’s springtime, but it’s also my time.  

And thank you for dubbing it officially spring, Fudge!