The day has finally come

For the past three weeks, there has been a single thought crossing my mind. "At some point, I'm going to have to give a person, a real live actual person, a haircut." And I've been setting myself up with the expectation that I'm going to give crappy haircuts before I can give good haircuts.

Today was live model day. I have been building this up in my mind as a pivotal point, which it was, but not for the reason I thought it would be. Up until this point, my perspective has been "I need to get a crappy haircut out of the way so I can get to my good ones" and I have been accepting that failure is a part of the beginning.

Well, today I skipped over crappy and went straight into sub par.

This is not a great hair cut by any stretch of the imagination, but Mason gave me an opportunity to realize that I'm much more creative than I give myself credit for. Mason is the husband of one of my oldest friends in Boise. As soon as I posted something on instagram about becoming a barber, he was the first person that volunteered as soon as I was available to. I haven't had an opportunity to have any one on one time with Mason, and even though it was awkward with me getting distracted by the 'here's how you do this' redirection I had to have pretty regularly, I really enjoyed being able to hang out for a bit and get to know him a little better.

And then Bill came in. Bill is a friend of Charles, and has known him for about 12 years. He comes in weekly to clean up his cut (incredibly short), and he allows himself to be used as an instrument of learning for students because he knows the value he offers, and the free haircut certainly isn't a bad deal. Bill has gotten the exact same haircut so many times, that he was literally telling me the step by step process of what it is that I needed to do to him. His feedback was immediate, and never harsh. He never said "you're doing it wrong," instead it was "here's how you could do this better." 

Absolutely invaluable. I was able to bring my comfort level on a straight razor from a 2 up to a 5. Next week, I want it to be at an 8. I was unable to finish Bill though, because Christian came in for an appointment we had set up. So Karlo, mentally exhausted after choosing what had to be literally the hardest haircut to do on his son, came by and finished up and was able to gain some additional experience. Plus, Karlo was able to get his first re-booking, so awesome job on him.

Christian is one of my best friends. He and his fiance' were the first people I told that I had been considering a career in hair about a year and a half ago. I remember we were all at the dinner table at my old apartment and he asked if I had ever done anything with hair before and I said no. So to him it just seemed like it was an at whim idea, but after seeing where it's taken me in the past few months, he was very excited to be one of the first. And after the confidence of a few cuts, I feel like I did a decent job.

I'm exhausted. Just mentally drained. This is so much harder than I thought it would be. Not in the hair cutting, just the toll it takes on me mentally. I hate not being home, I miss Hailie. She absolutely is my rock and I love her, but I feel like I never see her anymore. I keep telling myself "This is six months, we can do this," but when you're in the midst of it, it's never ending. I miss seeing my favorite person.

It's very humbling to know that I have so many people that support me and want to see me succeed, even if they don't necessarily understand what that success looks like. They push me to be a better version of myself. And on that note I am going to go to bed to try and get a decent amount of sleep for a change.