Tag: habit

Safety Razor!

I hate shaving. I hate everything about it. I hate how it feels, I hate how much time it takes, I hate the inevitable razor burn that follows. Most of all, I hate buying razor blades; I hate how much they cost and how it just feels like you’re getting ripped off when you buy replacements. More than once, I’ve wondered if it just wouldn’t be cheaper to keep buying a whole new Razor each time.

The only thing I hate more than shaving is the prickly, stubbly, neck-itch inducing presence of not shaving.

Today was my first shave with an old school, double-edged safety razor. And it was glorious.

The idea came about when we were at the store a few days ago picking up some supplies and I was lamenting, once again, the fact that I needed new razor blades. But tucked into a lonely corner of the lowest shelf, I noticed an inexpensive little box containing a double-bladed safety razor and a set of replacement blades. There were also replacement blades that were a fraction of the Gillete shit I’ve been buying.

Holding the box in my hand, I recalled a blog post I’d read a very long time ago, about how to shave like your grandpa. It had made shaving with a true safety razor seem old school and stylish and slick. I never followed up on the advice from that blog post, however, because it seemed like a true safety razor was beyond my reach. My grandfathers are deceased, so I can’t exactly ask them.

That blog post was written in 2008; what a difference seven years has made! Double-edged safety razors are coming back into vogue; the Wikipedia page indicates that since 2009, sales of traditional safety razors have increased by 1,000%.

Gentlemen readers of this blog, if you haven’t yet tried this, I urge you to do so. It’s less expensive and yet it also feels so much better. I had the best shave of my life today. I feel clean, whole, and thoroughly unburnt by razors. I’m actually looking forward to the next time I can shave, simply because of how good I felt immediately afterwards.

That’s the life lesson from this experience, at least for me. I approach too many things as necessary tasks that must be endured rather than savored. It’s something that I’m trying to change.

Finishing Books After I’ve Decided I Dislike Them

If you take a look at my Goodreads page, you’ll notice that I’ve had a book on my “currently reading” list that I started in December. It’s not a particularly long book, so it really shouldn’t have taken me this long to finish it. Except that it’s not very good and I’m not really enjoying myself. I’ll save the particular reasons for my review; that’s a thing I’ve started doing since several people informed me that they were actually interested in what I thought about particular books, instead of just the star rating. Imagine that! To be honest, I’m still trying to get used to the idea that people pay attention to the things I do here. I know I’m posting in a public space, but for the most part, I still tend to assume that I’m talking to myself.

Anyway, back to the books.

I try not to abandon a book once I’ve started reading it, even if it’s bad. Of course, I don’t always hold myself to this ideal and there are several books that I’ve abandoned over the years. But they are decidedly in the minority and even if a book isn’t very good or even just overwhelmingly mediocre, once I start, I feel compelled to finish. I’m not sure why this is. Is it due to some sort of feeling of professional responsibility to other authors? “You wrote this thing, so the least I can do is give you the courtesy of reading it all the way through before I render my judgement?”

Maybe it’s just stubbornness? Or some sort of weird OCD compulsion that only manifests in reading tendencies? I’m certainly not OCD in any other aspect of my life. The current state of my apartment can attest to that.

Regardless, I’ve books on my reading stack that I really want to get to, but I feel compelled to finish the ones that I began first. Even if I put them off for several months in the process, it seems. I wonder if anybody else does this?