Haircuts and YouTube in midlife

Journaling Wild in May

Photo by Michael Herfort on Unsplash

Hello again,

Welcome to our second (but first official) monthly round up email.

Friends, I so desperately need my hair cut and coloured. I’ve just done that thing where you turn the camera on on your phone and it is inexplicably facing your own face making you jump back in horror. But the problem is, I am not someone who enjoys going to the hairdressers. So I have actually needed my hair cut for about nine months. I am fascinated by people who enjoy a trip to the hairdressers. Those who find it relaxing or enjoyable in any way. I do not.

I even find making an appointment painful. I’ll be going to a new salon (obviously, retaining a hairdresser is as difficult as Rishi Sunak retaining any morals - little bit of politics for you there, bring on 4th July, hurrah, hurrah). The receptionist will ask, “what is it that you’re having?” and what I’ll want to say is, “please can I have the haircut that says, “she is in her 40’s but still a bit cool, definitely not trying to cling to her youth,” but also try not to give me a standard mum cut - although actually I have ‘minus 10 minutes’ to get ready in the morning so fine, I’ll take that hair cut, but also how are the young people colouring their hair nowadays?” The 20 year old will pause, sigh and hope to never become older than 22.

Then I’ll get there and have to sit in front of myself for hours on end. Oh my god mirrors. This will be the longest I EVER look at myself throughout a whole year. Plenty of time (and light god dammit) to notice that I should probably check better for those chin hairs and wish I’d put some makeup on because said hairdresser is impossibly flawless. All while drinking tea that I swear has teeny tiny hairs floating on top. How can it not?

There will be the small talk and my British politeness meaning I can’t possibly say, “can I just read my book please because this will be the longest I’ve ever gone without someone asking me for a snack,” and instead will chat inane drivel for two hours solid (which is pretty much life on a standard day but this time I’m paying for the privilege). And even the hairdresser is hoping I’ll just shut up what with my chat being extra weird when someone is ‘playing with my hair,’ because, lets be honest, someone ‘playing with your hair’ is a bit weird when you think about it. So eventually said chat will dry up (more awkwardness) and instead I’ll try to get some ‘stuff done’ on my phone (won’t) and wonder why they don’t have those magazines knocking about anymore where you can look at hairstyles (coz at this point I still won’t have figured out what I want) while other people around me just flick through Vogue.

Then at the backwash they’ll ask, “how’s your day going?’ and I will consider saying, “well, my daughter turned the light off as my son was in the toilet and he didn’t notice that the lid was down so he pissed all over the floor and I stepped in it and all while I was trying to figure out who had ordered cookies for a giant bake sale we’ve done for Gaza - because there’s a fucking genocide going on, which apparently is not front page news anymore - and shit, I’ve forgotten to change my HRT patch again which actually reminds me was something I was going to write about (the HRT thing, not my poor life admin) and did I mention that I should be working right now because time off can be tricky when your self employed…”

but what I will probably say is, “yeah, great thanks.”

And then they might say, “what is it that you do?” and I’ll say, “I just do a bit of writing,” and that will be that.

Finally, with my hair cut and coloured, they will ask how I like it dried and suggest they do a wave and I’ll say, sure, but what I mean is, dry it however you like mate the only ones seeing this haircut are the staff in Co-op and my pillow.

And then, after what feels like sixteen hours fully clothed in a sauna, and a final blast of having to look at myself not only from the front but from the back (err, yeah, great, I really love it, erm, yeah, thanks), I’ll hand over my bank card and it will cost me a million pounds and I’ll resent this a tiny bit but then remember that I’ve tried to do my colour myself and it has NEVER ended well and they’ve done a really good job and so I’ll tip but feel awkward about tipping because it feels a bit like giving the kids 20p to go and buy themselves some sweets, and then just as I think it is finally over they’ll go to find my coat and shout something like, “is it this, erm, short one?” and I’ll have to launch myself at said coat before they have to use any other adjectives like, ‘stained’ or ‘old’ and then I’ll walk home and immediately grab a bobble to shove up said million-pound hair cut and as a result no one will mention that it looks remotely different.

So yeah, I need my hair cut and coloured. But for some reason I keep putting it off.

We baked 500+ cookies and raised over £700 for Medical Aid for Palestinians. It’s tiny. But it’s something. “You can always do something” is a line I say regularly to our kids.

Here’s this month’s round up:

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Journaling:

This last month for me was all about Nature Journaling. If you’re a paid subscriber and you missed the live Nature Journaling Workshop we ran, don’t forget you can access the replay and get hold of the accompanying Nature Journaling Guide here. If you’re not a paid subscriber but want to be, then you can upgrade below and you’ll be able to see it too!

With that in mind, my favourite journaling prompt has been a simple one that asks me to reconnect with my environment:

• How is my environment feeling today? I tend to do this straight after I’ve done a quick check in with myself on the page. So, after I’ve scribbled for five minutes or so on how I’m feeling / how my body is feeling, I then try to look around. I might write down a few points about the weather, the temperature in the room, that there are a few tiny pea shoots in the garden….

  I can recommend it, especially as a morning journaling prompt. It’s very grounding.

I also dug out this post from last year with some nice journaling prompts for Spring. Yes, we’re almost into Summer (I know, you might not have noticed) but lots of them are still very useable. So here you are.

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Parenting:

A few things..

• It’s normally Sweden that has me dreaming of relocation but this piece by

  Claire Diaz-Ortiz
  makes a good case for Argentina. Most of the comparisons are to the US but I still enjoyed the reminder that so much of what is HARD about parenting, especially in the UK AND the US, is not down to something we are doing wrong as parents, but poor systems, policies and support. Also, how much does the parent socialising appeal!?

• Some good resources for raising feminist kids in this post by

  Zawn Villines

• I watched this five hundred times -

  alicepicchi.realtor

  

  A post shared by @alicepicchi.realtor

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Poetry:

Should I do a theme to this poetry section. Should it relate to the rest of this post. Or should I just stop over-thinking everything and send you my favourite poem from the past month:

Rather than forgetting her voice, by Ollie O’Neill

Rather than Forgetting Her Voice, by Ollie O’ Neill, from their collection, What We Are Given, Write Bloody Publishing.

I also recorded another poetry reading this month. If you are someone who hates the way society tells boys that being tough is their only option, you might like this one. It’s called Soft Boy and you can listen to OR watch here.

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Write together:

Our next live journaling session (online):

June 13th, 8.15pm GMT - Half year / Summer Goal Setting (remind yourself of all the good stuff you’ve done and created / think about what you’d like to be saying in another six months time / make a plan for that to happen).

Paid subscribers get access to all these sessions, upgrade below:

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Finally, YouTube:

If you have (slightly) older kids you’ll potentially hate it. But it is quite a handy video sharing platform. Turns out.

I journal most days and I’ve been considering recording some of these sessions and putting them on YouTube (thinking short ten minutes) so that we can do it together. Not live. But sort of ‘together’. So that if you have ten minutes in a morning and don’t know where to start, or want a bit of inspiration / loose guidance to write, or just like the idea of doing it ‘with’ someone.

But I also know that these will take time to record and upload so I don’t want to do it if it’s a crazy, stupid idea and no one over the age of 18 goes on YouTube. Actually, I do go on YouTube for a bit of Yoga with Adriene and my fitness videos, but that aside.

A poll my dears. Can you let me know your thoughts please:

I do know that there is loads of this type of stuff on there already but I could bring my own unique mix of slightly inappropriate humour, the eye bags of someone who hasn’t slept for the last decade and of course a sprinkling of poetry. Which I think could be…interesting?

Right, that’s it for this month.

Back for another round up in June. Eeek, summer. Surely we’ll not be wearing woollen socks by then?

Nelly x

P.s Am I the only one who hates getting their haircut? I’m now suddenly doubting this whole post, ha.