Newt's Beard: Dec 27th 2010 - June 5th, 2011.

I shaved it off, just a few hours ago. Felt like it was time for a change.

Well, it's a bit more complex than that.

The last few months, I've been incredibly anxious, depressed, and feeling completely helpless. I've been more than a little crazy, and dishing it out on my friends and family. This started in the tail end of 2010, and I've had enough of it.

The last few months, when I meet people, I say stuff like "you should have met me a year ago, I was a much more confident person" or something to that effect. Which is kind of a silly thing to say, eh?

Without going into particulars, because it's not my story to tell, I got a reminder that I am not myself, and that my friends are sick of it. So I just looked in the mirror, and decided it was time to lose the beard - and everything else that came with it over the last few months.

So I cut it off. And I'm hoping to cut all the other shit off, too.

In a much more concrete gesture, I'm also going to talk to my endocrinologist and see if there's a link between my fucked up moods and my blood sugars. Not that I really want to be one of those "blame it all on Diabetes" people, but I think it's something worth examining. And I need to keep working on some of the job stuff I started up on last week - and hope to God that bares fruit.

It's time to turn 2011 into a good year. I'm sick of shitty years.

For what it's worth, it's strange having a clean-shaven face after half a year of beard. My face looks thinner than I remember it. Sharper, more angular. And I definitely look more pissed off.

Time to work on that, too.