Many of you know, that I prefer to think of myself as a bearded burly man. The truth of this is that I hate shaving. I’ve never been one to keep it up regularly. I’ve also never had a job that required me to be clean shaven. I liked my beard, and it seems that the ladies in my life have always found it to fit my face, also. Shaving is an expensive nightmare chore that involves the significant chance of bloodshed. In the past, I’ve even managed to cut myself with my electric razor. On top of my apparent ability to cut myself open with even the most moron-proof razors, I also tend to break out when I shave. It’s a whole mess of nightmares.

Still, when I got back from Montana this year and really started hammering down on the job search, I decided that I would be much better off if I was clean shaven with a respectable haircut. No more Farrah-hair for me. No more Grisly Adams’ beard. I was going into the world with a shorn face and a close crop a buzzed down hair. It’s dignified and professional… or so they tell me.

In short this:

Sacrifices had to be made.

After getting my hair cleaned up by a friend so that I didn’t look like a patchy monstrosity on top, I was pretty much set, there. Now, I find myself in constant beard maintenance. I shave at least every other day, if not every day. I probably should shave 3-5 times per day, but that would seriously cut into my self-loathing time. For the last few weeks, I’ve been maintaining my facial abomination with my snazzy electric razor. It has been the best solution to keeping my hair gone for a very long time. The problem, it seems, is that my beard is made entirely of copper wire, and the electric razor just can’t win the fight on it’s own. Yes, its great for keeping myself shorn up in a tight spot, but my beard grows in faster than the electric razor can smooth it down, and it is the best electric razor I’ve ever used.

Luckily for me, past-Matt had some insight into the day that he might want to start keeping his face baby-ass smooth again, and joined Dollar Shave Club. ¹

Dollar Shave Club – A Razor Review

I don’t know why, other than the love of their YouTube commercial, that I signed up for Dollar Shave Club back in 2010. This was during a point in my life when I shaved at most twice a year. I even went so far as to sign up for what they call the “Executive,” razor. At $9/month it is still the cheapest set of blades I’ve ever purchased that didn’t have a yellow plastic handle attached. At some point along the way, I even had a conversation with my dad that went something along the lines of:

“It’s not like razors go bad. You could stock pile them.”

So I did. This is probably a good thing. See, in the past when I’ve shaved my man-mane, I’ve gone through 3-5 disposable razors in one shaving. The cheapest way I could get my beard removed was blast furnace.

Today, I finally tapped into my DSC supply and found something great.

Not only did I not cut my face to ribbons, which is a first, my face is smooth. I mean, like fresh Zamboni arena ice smooth. I think baby butts are going to be jealous of my face smoothness.

Of course, now that I have a back pile of somewhere around 1000000342324 razors, I don’t need to keep going, so I downgraded my account to the cheapest setting the actual $1 razors and set it to renew every three months. I figure by the time I’ve used up my executive blades, I’ll have a good stockpile of the twins.

Seriously, though, mark your calendars, because today was the first time I enjoyed the act of shaving. I might be a smooth face convert.

If you don’t believe me, well, you should watch the DSC advertisement. You’ll want to buy their razors for no reason other than how cool the commercial is.

This is probably my sole motivation for starting originally.

I don’t know what this conversion means for me. Perhaps I’m becoming more of an adult than I ever thought I’d be. Is the next step something crazy like, I don’t know, not eating pizza rolls every meal?

I sure hope not.

1 – Semi Endorsement. I don’t get paid for you signing up, but they give me a free months worth of razors. Which isn’t very much money. I would just feel scuzzy if I didn’t tell you that.