You don’t have to be anything you don’t want to be. You don’t have to live up to anyone’s expectations. There’s no need to strive for a kind of perfection that’s not very interesting to you. ~Rob Brezsny

Last Friday, I was all set to go get my hair done. I was looking like this:

 I really wanted to be platinum blonde though, and I really wanted to cut off all my hair. I was dreaming of an adorable Michelle Williams pixie cut or a faux hawk but I was really scared to do it, for a variety of reasons that were all rooted in vanity and wanting to be viewed as…I don’t know…sexually attractive to your average male? Feminine in the “traditional sense”? So, my plan walking in to my salon was to just go as blond as I could while keeping my hair as long as possible. Blond long hair = feminine, right?

Well, three hours later, I walked out of the salon looking like this:

My stylist Shari asked me why I wasn’t going to get the cut that I really wanted…and just by asking, she reminded me that I’m not half-assing my passion anymore – so why should I compromise on my hair?

As Rob Brezsny says, we don’t need to strive for a perfection that isn’t very interesting to us…and my desire to keep my long hair, and all that it had represented to me, is a perfection I’m not terribly interested in maintaining anymore.

What are you currently half-assing?