Monday, 20 September 2021
Hair Colour Context
As some of you may know, when you go to the hairdresser to have your hair coloured, by the time you’re due for the next colour, the dye has “faded”. Sometimes the change isn’t bad, but it’s unpleasant to live with at other times. And you’re the only one who cares! Sure, you might get a comment from a close family member, but they usually don’t see you every day.
Of course, it’s all about personal preference. We usually have an image in our heads of how we would like to present ourselves to the world. Some people are fussier about it than others, but we make choices on what we wear.
I’m selective on where I like the part of my hair. Therefore tolerate it being out by the millimetre to the left or right 😏. But, I don’t expect the hairdresser to understand. After all, I can fix it when I leave the hairdresser. So, the extent of the hairstyle’s variation to how I want it in my mind will determine how quickly I try to fix it.
And I don’t know what it is about hairdressers that challenge my vanity. Is it my inability to communicate my vision or a blinkered determination, on the hairdresser’s part, to implement the fashion cut of the day? Alternatively, it’s likely a little of both creative and communication differences.
The Error
The day I was supposed to get my haircut was the day the hairdresser had a personal day. Her leave delayed my colour by two weeks. Not a problem, yet in that time, the colour went from acceptable to blah.
I thought a wash with the chocolate shampoo would do wonders for the colour. It did. I was thrilled with the colour. So much so that at the next shampoo, I did it again. However, this time, it didn’t look as good because it had built on the existing colour.
My error was believing the first shampoo would wash out the previous colour entirely. So, I used the chocolate shampoo on the second shampoo again. Sadly, it came out darker. The colour wasn’t too bad, but it looked worse by the next wash day and hairdresser day.
This experimenting with colour shampoo gave my hairdresser license to charge me more to fix the mistake. My hair had additional “red” from the chocolate shampoo, throwing out the existing expensive colour. In hindsight, I would have been better pushing out the hair appointment by another fortnight to wash out the colour. Of course, there would be no guarantees that some other form of flawed logic wouldn’t capture my imagination.
If I almost fell off the chair when I first embarked on this journey with the cost, today sent me to the floor!! I felt trapped, and it was all a result of a poor shampoo choice.
Trapped
When I’m trapped, I lash out. If I’ve made a mistake and don’t want to own the error, I lash out. Slowly, I caught my internal rage. However, I realised why I stopped hairdressers to colour my hair and stuck with supermarket colours. The colour a hairdresser gives you is seldom what you want.
Ironically and sadly, the best hairdresser was able to replicate the supermarket colour on the box perfectly. The hairdresser was also incredibly generous and provided me with the details so that other hairdressers could replicate the colour! How amazingly thoughtful and kind was that?! Alas, Vanity Hair was also in Jindabyne, New South Wales and is now sadly permanently closed.
Response
Under shocking circumstances like the price to fix my mistake, I adopt a “fight” position. The fight takes the form of a barrage of questions fired at the messenger in the situation, following the psychological path of grief: denial, anger, negotiation, depression and acceptance. Today, I went through each of the phases quite rapidly.
And although I’m not grieving, I find the “grief” response can apply to any number of situations, including changes or new information.
First, it was “what?, no?”, then anger which I strategically channelled into checking my bank balance to buy me some time to come to grips with the shock. Following the shock, I hit negotiation. It was to understand my options. And, at the back of my mind, an exit strategy out of this horrible costly hair-colouring exercise began to cook.
Don’t get me wrong; it’s a beautiful hair colour. All I wanted was a colour with the same hue as the previous colour but a little lighter to blend in with my regrowth. The colour I wanted was the same as if I’d put the brunette dry shampoo on it.
Exit Strategy
So, to get me out of any more months of frustration, I have to develop an exit strategy. As far as I can see, I have three options: staying the current course and hoping it gets cheaper. Two, do nothing with the colour next time and let it grow out over time, or three, shave my head and start again. Fourthly, and that’s to do my colour from a supermarket colour – they’ve been great in the past.
The only reason I began getting the hairdresser to do colours again was that I met a great hairdresser in Jindabyne’s Vanity Hair. The owner knew colour. For instance, when I took my supermarket colour in, although she was unable for insurance reasons to put that colour on, she was able to make up a similar colour. And in an enormous act of generosity, it provided me with the colour codes to allow any other hairdresser to reproduce it.
One of the code’s flow-on effects was that they taught four other hairdressers how to treat a colour challenge they’d been facing and couldn’t resolve, even with assistance from the dye manufacturers. Each hairdresser was impressed with adding a colour, which made sense but hadn’t tweaked because of the advice they’d received or their training.
Shaving my head is something I’ve wanted to do my whole life, and I thought it might be something for when I retire or reach sixty. However, the box colour is 30 times cheaper than what I paid today! Anyway, I’m leaning toward the third option.
Today's Cards
The Cards - Hair Colour Analysis
Carryover Cards
No cards carried over from yesterday.
Cross
Once I’d formed the Goal (aim) to venture into the many Possibilities offered up by coloured shampoo, there was little that could stop the impending crash.
This Goal formed in the Distant Past when I wanted an Adventure (Day 096 and Day 147) or, put simply, I wanted to try something different. My Adventure into the world of hair colour brought out, more recently (Recent Past), my sense of fun in Playfulness.
For me, hair colour requires Courage, and under its influence, I ended up Now Traveling along this path. Does Travelling to the hairdresser count as travel? Considering we’ve been dodging COVID-19 lockdown, I’m going to say, “yes”.
Unfortunately, my error in judgment regarding the coloured shampoo will most likely lead to Future Energy, where I’m Clinging to the Past. Clinging to what was and how I loved it after the first coloured shampoo attempt.
Base
Alas, there’s no mystery for Feelings of Sorrow to surround my situation. 😢
Others’ Views are that I’m suffering Exhaustion and not thinking clearly. It could be the continual late nights catching up, I suppose.
What I was most hoping for was Integration. That is, the unity between hair-colour shampoo and hairdresser-applied colour would work together. My fear is the Integration I had expected didn’t work out. Sadly, this was the case.
Lastly, The Master is in the Outcome position, suggesting that the experience was worthwhile because I learnt to detach and acknowledge the vanity elements. The Master also highlights the “mastery” over my emotions in the fight-flight response spectrum.
By the way, I put the meditative person in the middle because this would be the calm, cool head assessing every situation. However, it’s more likely to be a confused looking person with hands-on-hips wondering which response to enact, aka “frozen” by indecision, compared to its converse opposite.
References
- Osho, Osho Zen Tarot – The Transcendental Game of Zen, St Martin’s Press, ISBN 0-312-11733-7
- Tarot Layouts per month
- Vanity Hair, Jindabyne – site seems active. Yet the notice that comes up on a search says “permanently close”
SEO – Well, it’s time for another hairdresser visit but not before I’d tampered with my hair using a coloured shampoo which had costly consequence.
