Oops, I did it again

I've been trying to grow out my hair since the beginning of the year. Not that you'd notice, because somehow it keeps getting shorter!

Early in January, I went to the hair salon for the last time. I told the stylist that I was trying to grow it out, so she should just clean up the layers and leave the length alone. But somehow, when she was finished, my entire 'do was an inch shorter, and the layers were still choppy and sloppy! I decided there was no point in throwing away 20 dollars every couple of months on inferior haircuts...if my haircut was going to be inferior, it might as well be free! So I started trimming it myself. Now, cutting your own layers is a sight more difficult than cutting your own blunt bob (which I was doing regularly from spring 2016 until last August), and every time I do it, I mess it up royally. Usually, my attempts to fix my mistakes result in me cutting off a significant amount of length; thus, in all the time I've been "growing out" my hair, it's been staying the exact same length, but getting progressively more mangy.

I promised myself that I would stop trying to layer my hair; I would just grow it out until it was long enough that I could trim off the uneven bits, but by the time I was due for a bleach touch-up on my roots, the back of my head was looking flat as a pancake, and I just couldn't resist the temptation to add some more volume back there. I had watched a ton of videos on cutting an angled bob, and I had high hopes that I would be able to get it right this time. It took me 2+ hours to divide it into sections, trim them one at a time with lots of breaks to check the back of my head with a hand mirror, and blend the ends into what I hoped would be some perfectly gradated layers. Well, when the hour was over, and I took down all the pinned sections, it became clear that I had once again failed miserably. My hair looked like I had hacked at it with safety scissors. The only way to even get it close to presentable was to lop a good inch off the front. Here I am, almost a year into growing out my hair, and it's shorter than it was when I first had it bobbed!

Well, when faced with the worst, we just have to do the best we can. I trimmed my bangs so they didn't overpower the ridiculously short front portion, I bleached and toned the roots, and I finally got what almost looks like a stylish flapper bob and not a total disaster (at least from the front—just don't look at the sides)!

I told you not to look!

But this is the end of the line! No matter how shaggy my hair starts to look as it grows out, I absolutely can not go anywhere near it with a blade! Ponytails are going to be my new best friend—I swear it!

So yeah, I made an oopsie with my hair again, but not all repeats are repeat mistakes. Sometimes they're just repeat color schemes.

For my first day at work with my new haircut, I made my hair (which still bears a hint of pink at the ends) match my shoes (my New Thing for the day). As I had an in-person meeting scheduled for the warmest part of the afternoon and wanted something professional but sleeveless, this purple blouse was the ideal top. And the only bottoms that worked well with both the top and the shoes were the black pants. As I was debating whether to blog this rather everyday outfit, a post from the past came floating to my consciousness: PP. Purple and pink isn't such an uncommon combination, but it's not often that I'm tempted twice to use the exact same title for a blog post featuring it.