I've been cutting my own hair for the past few years. Well, it's several years at this point, by my measure of "several". 6 years I think? I've been using roughly the same haircut this whole time, but this time I did something different. I kind of hate it, but I'm trying to give it some time. I can always hack the rest of it off, I remind myself, but I can't go "No you know what, I preferred it before I hacked it all off. Let me just put it back." I left plenty of leeway for me to cut it basically back into my old classic hairstyle.

What I've got now is something between mullet, pompadour, and fauxhawk. I guess it's a variation on the bird's nest haircut. I'm not trying to look like I'm doing the bird's nest thing, nor am I trying to do any of the other named haircuts. I just wanted to do something that fit my face shape, which I would describe as "landscape mode." If I cut my hair into a "business on the sides, party on top" configuration, I will resemble something more along the lines of a square.

Specialness

I was watching a fashion video today called "The Imminent Death of Luxury" by Bliss Foster. While describing the common theory for why the event in the title is thought to be happening, Foster defined the value proposition of a luxury brand as follows: "All luxury companies essentially offer the same thing: Specialness." This was 2 minutes into the video, and I have not watched further. I'll get there before this post is out, but I got distracted by the comments. One in particular said, "I look at almost all handmade goods as luxury items. "

This reminded me of why I'm trying to create my own small business doing something that is profoundly mechanized and industrialized already. I really believe that making it by hand makes it special, and now that it's getting to be summer, I can focus on doing that work. I've been working on the product primarily, but I've also been cooking mentally about the brand in the back of my mind. It'll be a sub-brand within my existing business, I suppose. Does that make it more or less special? Each product will be more one-of-a-kind than the factory-produced version of the product, but it will be less one-of-a-kind than my other products. Is that more special for being a proper product that one can build a self-image around, rather than being an external thing to behold? I want my products to be less of me, and more of the consumer. I want to help people create worlds inside themselves, and imagine their future with my product. It's not just for marketing, but for the idea that what I'm making is about them, not me. Is that luxurious, though? Or is luxury a statement? I suppose the answer is that luxury is in the eye of the beholder. Will my customers want to be tasteful and just use a nearly-identical product that is notable only in its feel, in the pleasure of its use? Or will they want the product to be a statement in itself, lending originality and unmistakability to whatever the customers use it for?

(I'm being slightly vague about my business for the sake of maintaining respectful distance between personas. This blog is not for shilling my own products. Blessedly, wonderfully, I can take that hat off here. I'm here for shilling my words.)

I want my product to be quality, but I fear it will mainly be quirky. It's a trap I find myself in a lot. I strive for a sort of refined version of normalcy in many ways, but the uncontainable mess of myself springs out of me like snakes in a can when a crack is found. And people like the snakes in a can all over the floor. I don't hate that, I couldn't hate that. I survive based on that. But I think I'd like it better if I were just good at things, rather than charmingly unique at things. I want to be charming like dashing, not charming like a twee bug diorama projecting from the wall of an already-narrow hallway that leads to a bathroom in a niche Portland music venue slash coffee house, one which insists upon itself as you wait, nose-to-nose with it, for the bathroom line to move along, like some homebrew version of the worldbuilding put into the design of Disney parks queue areas.

I'm a mess and I just embellish the mess and call it design. People take it as design. I want perfection, though. I want specialness of quality, not of quirk. I know I sound self-centered right now, but what I am is just self-employed. At least on the small business front. In that part of my life, my business is me, and so I have to think about these things. I'd really prefer to not think about myself. I'd prefer to do work that doesn't pertain to me or reflect me. I'm better at doing me though, which is to say that I am better at failing to do what I need to do and coming up with something that is close enough to the assignment and turning it in right at the deadline, having used every minute to make and remake and remake, only to find it's messier and messier each time.

When I was younger, I drew with a pencil. I would erase and re-draw lines over and over and over again, until my eraser wore holes in the paper, visibly ruining the whole image for the idea of perfecting this small portion. After a good long childhood of doing this, I decided to only draw in pen while I was in college. I think I gained something in that period that was good for me, that I need again, but that I can't afford in my life's present expressions. I made my mistakes work not by overworking them, but by just accepting them and building around them. It was kind of economical. Faster art and eventually better art resulted. Repeated imperfect practice made for more confident improvisation.

I think that life demands that of me again, but I can't afford it. People want something specific from me, so I have to try again and again to do it right until it's right. I also can't afford the time-cost of this perfectionism. Something's gotta give. Do I give up the appearance of ease and professionalism to produce something that was improvised and unique? Or do I spend my free time slaving away at things to make it appear like I created a masterwork in a quarter of the time?

I feel like I'm already doing something else new and different, but I don't know what to call it yet. It's not anything new in the world, just new to me. I'm trying to make the process be the product in a large way. My perfectionism, my labor, my diligence, and my ultimate failure to live up to my own imagination is the story of everything I make. Every time, I say, it will be better next time. I worry that people grow impatient with me, thinking, "Why isn't it better already?" But it seems like the truth is that people like to see the change in my performance. Is that the truth? Or am I just getting that from people reacting to my hidden hours of overwork?

I think I can learn to stop worrying a little bit by looking back at the comment I saw today. Anything handmade is a luxury. I don't know if I agree with everything the commenter meant by that, but to me it has a certain animism to it. To create something by hand is to imbue specialness, to know the story of an item is to imbue it with specialness, to treasure an item is to imbue it with specialness. I can tell people about the maker of the soap I have at my bathroom sink at home, even though it's not particularly special outside of how much I like the maker, and how much I like a nice handmade soap. It's not expensie, but it feels luxurious when I use it, moreso than the expensive handmade soaps I have that I don't know the story behind. (I like soap.) This isn't just a revelation in my worry that personality alone can't carry my work, it's more of a revelation that I can carry my life and imbue it with specialness by caring about the things within it, be they items, people, memories, routines, seasons, or selves.