The Cliff

I went to the hairdresser's yesterday. It's been almost two years since I visited one, and though my hair just kept growing it started to look a little... rough around the edges, I guess. Actually, it was getting so long that it became bothersome to an extent.

I sat in the hairdresser's chair with a mirror in front of me to stare at my reflection and the woman's gestures as she started combing my hair.

"My God, what happened to your hair?" she asked, looking appalled. She lifted a bunch of my hair up - where all the split ends were. "How did it get so dry? Did you put treatment on your hair regularly?"

Me, shrugging: "No... I just let it grow, I guess. I know it looks bad, just cut it all off."

The woman shook her head and did as I asked. By the time it was time to pay for the haircut, she was hard-selling me some hair treatment. I bought it, knowing deep down that I'm just not the kind of girl who's ever going to spend more than 10 minutes grooming herself.

Make-up? I know how to apply mascara, that's about it. I think girls learn the 'art' of tarting their faces up when they're still playing with dolls as they watch their own mothers do it, and since my mother never did I just never learned.

This evening I was sitting in the kitchen and it all became so clear, what I'm about to do. I've no idea if what I'm about to do is the right thing or not. For all I know I'll come back crying my eyes out... but if I never try, I'll never know. And if I never know, I'll always regret it.

I think I'm going to embrace my 'artistic' side. For the first time... I'm gonna do it, and I'm scared. It feels like I'm about to jump off a cliff. In a way, that's exactly what I'm about to do - jump off a cliff by quitting my job.

Choices are never simple, and they're never clear-cut. It started off with me thinking I was going to plan for the future, until I realised that there could be no future worth living for unless I created it in the present. And if you're going to plan your future by creating it in the present, that means that there can't be any sense of certainty whatsoever. Only self-belief.