I am officially obsessed!

I looked in a mirror about 15 times yesterday evening. Any excuse to go in to the hall or downstairs WC was taken advantage off for a quick look-see at my hair.

Apparently no one else really notices the sparkly silver roots that are all over the top of my head and around the sides. However, their appearance has caused me to purchase 5 headbands, 6 new hair clips, 2 new hair styling products and to experiment with a variety of new hair dos (and don'ts).

Little sparkly roots...see?

I know that the novelty will wear off - probably the longer my roots get the shorter my patience with this topic will get - but for now it is my obsession. I scour Pinterest every evening looking for more silver vixens, I research what colours will look good with different types of grey hair, I look at women (and men) in the street who are grey or going grey and wonder how they decided and when they decided or whether they didn't decide and are just having a few weeks of feeling slummy.

I watched a video yesterday about a women who has written a book about going grey and reflected that she didn't really look grey, and how I hope after all this preparation and blogging and purchasing of products I am VERY grey underneath. Otherwise it's all a bit of a let down.

And now I am blogging about the fact that very little is happening as a way of making it feel like something is happening.

I'm a go-getter (I think that's what they call people like me. I'm also can-do. And a control freak. I'm basically your biggest nightmare). So when I decide to do something I do it. But you can't make your hair grow any faster than it's going to grow. I'm sure there is food you can eat and supplements you can take but fundamentally hair does its own thing and it does it very slowly.

My boyfriend observed that my excitement about my sprigs of grey was akin to the excitement you get when you notice that your seeds have sprouted in the garden. You put them in the ground, you watered them but a part of you never really believed that anything was going to happen. Then, one day, you went outside and their little heads were peeping above the earth, still wearing their little seed-head hats and you thought how amazing it was and how fantastic you were for making that happen (even though you did very little except add water).

The difference is that every time you look at your seedlings they are bigger. They have 2 leaves, then 4. Then you don't check them for a couple of days and they grow huge while your back is turned. Often, within weeks, you have something with a flower or a leaf you can eat.

But my hair will take months if not years to bear fruit (if you can excuse the analogy). And I can't imagine that a couple of days will go by without me looking at it only to be hit with the surprise about how much it has grown. Not if I keep checking the mirror every half an hour anyway.

The life lesson here is probably something to do with patience, something to do with letting go of needing to control and direct everything, letting go of the belief that my sheer force of will can make something happen faster than nature desires. And maybe it's too soon to take lessons from it. In plant terms I've still got my little seed-head hat on. And, until there's really something to see here I should probably find myself a better hobby than checking the mirror.