I’m sick of shaving for work everyday. When I first started being a grownup, it would always hurt, every time I shaved. I had a ton of acne, so you know, that didn’t help. And so I never liked shaving. And I wouldn’t. I always had some sort of a Shaggy from Scooby-Do look going on. But the years started to accumulate and various bosses and managers started to insist a little bit more ardently each time that I seriously shave for work every day. Every single day.

And for my first few jobs I would complain. Sometimes I would shave but most of the time I wouldn’t. Sometimes I would just ignore them and grow out a huge beard. And at that point it was like, whatever, he has a beard. A beard is better, well, not really better, but it’s slightly more acceptable, just ever so slightly more professional than scruff, which suggests that you just got out of bed and were running so late for work that you didn’t bother to actually go about the grooming process in a hundred percent kind of way. And then it’s like, what else did this guy not bother to do this morning?

But I didn’t really care. I just wouldn’t shave, and when somebody talked to me about shaving, I’d get all defensive and start talking really fast, really loud, unnecessarily fast and loud, that I hate shaving, that I hate being told what to do, that I hate being told to shave. That it hurt my face and gave me razor burn.

This actually used to be true. But now I’m on like my fourth job out of college, and I guess if I want to keep working where I’m working right now I have to shave every single day. And I wish I could still complain that it hurts, but it doesn’t even hurt anymore. I can shave in like two seconds. It doesn’t even take any time out of my day anymore. The world has gotten to me, calloused my skin, numbed the nerve endings in my face to the point where I can get up and run a five-bladed razor across the entirety of my face in less time than it takes me to brush my teeth, and I never cut myself anymore, I never even get any actual razor burn, something that, would I even try to complain about, I’d have nothing to point to, nothing to lift my chin and show the underside of my neck to.

And right now I’m drinking a beer. It’s some craft beer made in some craft brewery by two craft brewers, two guys that decided to include on the bottle an illustration of themselves, one of those pictures of a photo that’s run through an editing program so that it comes out looking like a pencil drawing. And this one guy looks kind of regular, just wearing a t-shirt and he’s got that whatever haircut. And the other guy, yeah he’s wearing a t-shirt also, but what really counts here is that this guy has a giant beard.

And I don’t even know which came first, me writing this whole piece about beards and shaving, or me looking at this bottle and noticing this computer rendered illustration of what this craftman’s beard would look like had it been drawn with a pencil. Have I been looking at it, staring at it for a while, and then, without really thinking about it, I started writing all about how much I hate shaving? Maybe. But I’d like to think that I independently came up with this idea, got really animated, which I am, I’m really very aggrieved right now, thinking about how I have to shave, every day, and how much I hate it, because when I’m especially steamed, I’ll write sentences illustrating how steamed I am, which is how this often works, I’ll rile myself up just by thinking about getting riled up, and then I went to take a sip of my beer, and I aw this beard drawing, and it threw me over the edge, it was the inspiration for the previous two paragraphs, the universe’s way of just taking my baby-faced rage to the next level.

Man, once I’m done waiting tables, I’m going to grow the biggest beard imaginable. Or, I guess I could just grow a moustache, right now. The restaurant where I work at, the only type of facial hair permitted, it’s moustaches. Which, I don’t know, do I really want a moustache? It’s kind of a really obscure way to buck the system. And the system’s not even being bucked, because it’s all within the realm of acceptable rules and regulations. No, what I need to do it just leave like one spot on my face, and not shave that one area, and when the bosses ask me what’s up, I’ll just be like, I don’t know, it’s crazy, it’s just a random spot that refuses to be shaved. Like a growth maybe.

No, that sounds nuts, a terrible idea.