BSODmyself

Today was bittersweet.

It was bitter because I cut my hair that I had been growing for more than a year. It was sweet because I was once again able to donate my hair to my favorite charity, Locks of Love. I’ve been making these contributions since 2003. They started by chance one day as I happened upon a morning show that was doing a piece about the organization. They showed pictures of kids who couldn’t grow hair because of skin diseases and chemotherapy treatments for various types of cancers. It was sad, but it got even sadder for me when I remembered how tough being a normal kid was socially. I’m sure we all felt awkward at some time during our childhood, myself maybe more so. To a condition that kept you from growing hair on top of the normal pressures of childhood and young adulthood seemed like it would have been complete torture. So that day, I started growing my hair to show solidarity with sick children all over the world. Luckily my hair grew fast that year, and I was about to donate twelve inches my first time. This last time around, I was able to donate even more than that.

There were other reasons for growing my hair. I pushed this donation as far as I could. First, some chicks dig a guy with long hair. I’m sure even more chicks would be down with it knowing that I was doing it “for the children.” Lately, though having long hair was the number one outward sign that I could exhibit of my personal and spiritual commitment to rock-and-roll, individuality and freedom from society’s bullshit norms. I would walk around the people I was exposed to everyday — the popular kids, the future Wall Street thieves, the self-aggrandizing political insiders and all the other so-called important people of the world. I could feel their contempt, because with one simple act of patience and perseverance, I created both defiance and social commentary against them and their ways.

I held on as long as I could, though. I’m currently in the process of re-evaluating my own personal brand. It’s a safe bet that part of the brand will involve scaling back in this regard quite a bit. That, and the practical situations that I’m facing in the “professional” and “career” worlds have helped to move me toward this action. While I could look on this as another unfortunate instance in a global economic downturn, I’m now re-interpreting my new short-haired lifestyle as a perverse mockery of the straight world, the same straight world that has spread madness, poverty, war and pestilence for centuries, despite their citizens claims of importance, wisdom and enlightenment.

While I doubt that I will be able to contribute via my hair donations in the near future, there are other ways to help. I encourage you, my loyal readers, to check out Locks of Love’s website and learn about the various ways you can make the world a little brighter for a sick child.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 30th, 2009 at 10:37 am and is filed under Rants.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.