Oh hair!

I've given this a lot of thought, as I give all hair related things a lot of thought, and I think I'm going natural. Well, truth be told I've been natural. I'm 1 year out from getting relaxers, but I've been maintaining scheduled visits to the beauty salon for regular washing & flat ironing. This wasn't the worst thing when I lived in California. But then I moved to Washington for a job and these hair dressers are NOT gentle. I don't care about normal heat damage (from a blow dry and flat iron), but I do care about damage from yanking a blow dryer through my hair. My father's a hair dresser, I've been doing this hair salon thing for more years than I'd like to count, and these practices just don't fly in my book. (Note, they shouldn't fly in yours neither.) Thus, I think I'm left to my own devices.

Currently my hair is in box braids (which are great and I highly recommend!!!). However, they need to come out in the next few weeks and from there, well, I think I'm on my own for a while. Because I'm still growing out my relaxer and refuse to do a big chop (I've done it before, go back to much earlier posts), the hair texture/ curl pattern is all over the place. The only way to really overcome that might be to alternate between buns and braids. Maybe some clip ins... But longevity wise, I'm convinced I can get a defined curl pattern going with products and without braid-outs/twist-outs. I don't like those latter options because they look great for 1.5 days and then I'm stuck with a mess by Wednesday at the latest. Maybe that's just me, but I don't have the time or patience for all that.

And there is my real concern, time and patience. It's the tail end of summer and I feel optimistic about my ability to keep up a natural hair routine. But once school kicks in, between grading papers and keeping a gym schedule (which I had to re-devote myself to, ugh!), I feel hair may fall to the wayside. Let's just stay optimistic for now and I'll do my best to keep these hair updates coming.

I don't know these women, but I'm dreaming of a similar curl pattern. #HairEnvy