Documenting your hair journey

As I sit here with conditioner on my head, I figure that I might as well take this time to type something up.

When people decide to embark on their "healthy hair," "long hair," "transition to natural hair" or whatever journey they decide to take with their hair, often times they neglect to actually document the journey. As with any journey in life, a hair journey can be repleat with ups and downs, surprises, enlightenment, times of frustration, and things in between.  Sometimes you will feel that your hair isn't growing or has gotten thinner. Other times you may think that a certain relaxer left your hair more underprocessed than another, or that one product left your hair shinier than another. Whatever the situation, these things can be effectively declared by documenting.

Now what do I mean by documenting?

1) Write!! Start a blog. Have a designated journal (online or hardcopy). Start a word or powerpoint document to show milestones. You figure out what you prefer to do. But have some sort of written documentation of big things in your journey. Examples of things that I think are important to note include:

• Changes in your haircare routine (styling, overall regimen, product use)
• Products that your hair did or didn't respond well to
• New tools or products
• Setbacks (ie: breakage, heat damage, over or underprocessing of a relaxer, thinning, etc)
• Growth changes/milestones

 

2) Take pictures!! Pictures are worth a thousand words. There are times when you will feel that your hair isn't growing or that it appears different or a style looked better on you, etc. Pictures help you to actually see your journey and remind you of how far you've come. It can help you to prove that you've had a setback or that your hair has grown more than you thought. A useful tip is to use the setting on your camera that allows the dates to be posted on the pictures. This ensures that you always know at what part of your journey you were in when the picture was taken. Just make sure you set the right date on the camera. Alternatively, you can upload the pictures to your hardrive by date. Another tip, you can link your powerpoint journal or blog and pictures together to have everything in one place.

3) Record!! Maybe you're the type of person who doesn't want to write or type or take pictures. Make video clips of yourself doing things to your hair or measuring your hair or what have you, just so you have as a reference. And if you decide that you want to share your journey with the world, there is always youtube or facebook.

 

No matter how you choose to do it, just do it. It doesn't matter where you are in your hair care journey. It's never to late to start seeing how your goals are being fulfilled.

 

Twists 5 months into my journey

 

Good luck on the journey!

 

B