A new haircut, lessons re-learned, y ‘un café con leche por favor’

by Paul Goodchild on August 16, 2011

I haven’t felt like writing on this personal blog for a while. Well that’s not entirely true, I have. But I just haven’t felt like I have the writing ‘edge’ and motivation to finish any article I’ve started.

I’ve been so gung-ho with business and entrepreneurial pursuits that writing for fun got left by the way-side.

Travel and haircuts – a right royal pain that never gets addressed

I’ve travelled a lot, and one topic that never gets addressed by people on their many “location independent” blogs is that of ‘haircuts’.

What am I on about?

Perhaps I’m more proud than I’d care to admit, but I like my hair to look decent.  I don’t suit it short, so it’s more work to make it look half-respectable.

And this creates a problem – inertia. I’d rather my hair grew long and unsightly than get it cut in a foreign country, running the risk of my hair looking like a dog crawled over it with a butchers knife.

My hair hasn’t seen a blade in 7 months as I’ve been living in Spain for 5 months already. Until today – I bit the bullet and found a hair dresser in Valencia that had at least basic English-speaking level that would sort out my “mop” once and for all.

I now look a little more fashionable – I’m told I look more “like a French lesbian”.

I’m not sure if I’m happy about that.

Compliments are always worth giving

The guy that cut my hair was nice, with genuine conversation – not the plastic “let’s make hairdressing talk now”.

As I left the shop, he said (brokenly) “mui bien, nice shave today.”

Which translates as: ‘your hair looks good!’

Clearly, being the one who cut it, he has no modesty issues, but I understood what he was saying.  It looks good on me (and no, he wasn’t gay) so it must better than the raggedy-ass mess of straw I had a half-an-hour earlier.

And that compliment felt good.

As I walked away, I wondered about this good feeling. I didn’t feel great about the hair since I’m still adjusting to it even now; it was simply that he genuinely thought it looked good.

Conclusion: women are not the only ones like compliments about their hair.

Some of you might be reading this and wondering how I could write 300 words about getting my hair cut.  But you’re still here, aren’t you?

There’s no denying: good coffee is a special thing

I’ve written several times in the past about my repetitive demise into coffee addiction. It’s just one of those things I have to stay on top of.

When you drink good coffee, man, is it good!

But last week I put a stop to it. I lasted 8 days. Any traces of my coffee in my caffeine-addled brain were gone. The headaches finally stopped around day 5.

Feeling good about finally doing something about the state of my hair, receiving a genuine compliment about it, and wanting a reward for the trial of coming down off coffee, I decided to … have a coffee.

And it was great!  Segafredo no less.  I’m still buzzing of it which is in-part while I’m writing like a machine now.

Coffee is lovely, but in moderation. When you’re having it everyday, it might be worth coming off it for a week.

Where’s the harm?  When you drink coffee again afterwards, you’ll enjoy it much more for how it tastes, than how it makes you “wake up in the morning”.

Holidays, more writing, and aspirations

My brother and I have been busy the last 6~8 weeks.

We’ve revamped our Host Like Toast: WordPress Web Hosting, launched a great tool for sync’ing time tracking software such as Toggl, with accounts/billing services such a FreeAgent, and yesterday launched a free tool that will form part of our flagship product:

WP Toast: WordPress – 1 minute installation tool

We’re making progress.

Some days the work doesn’t feel like it’s worth it, but we’re on to something I feel, so watch this space.

In a couple of days I disappear to Italy with one of my closest friends for a week of hiking, connecting, wine, and good laughs.  Always laughs.  But I intend to write more here, keeping interested people up-to-date and aiming to strike a better balance between working and life.

I haven’t been getting that balance quite right of late, but ya do what you can.

{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }

nochnoch August 18, 2011 at 09:54

totally worth a +1
and i LOVE your hair especially when it swishes
miss u paulie

noch

nochnoch.com

Reply

Paul Goodchild August 18, 2011 at 10:42

hehe, thank you! 🙂

I just realised the +1 button was broken… it’s fixed now so you can +1 if ya like 🙂
P.

Reply

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