Folks often ask me how much work it is to grow out my beard and I tell them it’s easy as can be. Just don’t shave.

For the most part my beard tends to grow out in a relatively reasonable shape that often looks like I spend time grooming it, but I generally don’t mess with it much. Every now and then I’ll trim it up using the same electric sheers I use to shave my head and I usually just wing it freehand to catch straggly hairs. The last time I had it done professionally I noticed that the stylist seemed to just slap a hair guide onto her sheers and use that to make a nice uniform shape. It looked easy enough and my sheers have hair guides so this past weekend when I shaved my head for Courtney’s commencement I figured I should try out that beard trimming process as I was a bit more shaggy than usual.

You can guess what happened next. My attempt at trimming the way the stylist does it resulted in my taking off a lot more beard than I had planned to. I thought I might lose an inch, but my beard is the shortest it’s been in over 15 years. Here’s the result:

Click to embiggen!

Jinkies! I shouldn’t be too surprised as I’m not a stylist and it’s not like I practice beard trimming that often. I’m told it makes me look younger, it certainly eliminated most of the gray that was showing up in my beard, and at least one of the ladies at work said I “no longer look like a terrorist.” Which could be a good or bad thing depending on the situation. Surprisingly she’s been the only one outside of my family to mention it so far. Everyone else must be too scared to bring it up or something.

In time it’ll grow back out again so I’m not too upset. By winter it’ll be halfway back to its usual length and by next spring I’ll probably have to try trimming it again. I’ll go back to the freehand method as that seems to work best for me.