Monday morning and time for my blog and ‘thought for the week’. Bear with me. I’ve come back from my early morning walk, having stumbled along it looking like the Michelon Man in my puffer jacket and scarf – I was the ONLY one on the trail. It was a beautiful crisp morning too, but verra cold, ken?

I had my coffee at my local cafe and read the paper and am now home considering all the things I need to do in the next two days before going in to work on Wednesday.

In the meantime, I want to talk about a matter close to my heart – or should I say, head – right now.

I’ve been a blonde most of my life, except for a brief spurt of red hair in my late thirties. Lately, in order to maintain those flowing golden locks, I’ve kept up a steady practice of applying various shades of blonde to the roots. And okay, it looked fine and for a few years now I’ve loved the iconic plait and colour and thought I’d just keep doing it ad infinitum. But more recently I’ve found my feelings change about all that. They went something like this: I wonder what I really look like under all this bleached goldenness? Is it doing my scalp any good? My skin and face are showing the signs of my long experience on this earth – something I don’t mind too much, because much of that is laughter lines – but my hair does not. In fact, they are matching less and less. Am I happy with that? I felt more and more trapped in routine of maintaining a ‘look’ rather than going with my growing sense of breaking free and being me. The rest of me is excited about the future and the places I want to travel, and not being so concerned with what others think I should do or be, and feeling like grabbing life by the coattails and leaping off into the unknown. It’s a great place to be! I have no children and am not tied down to house or hubby, and have some good close friends and family. . .

So, the getting the hair back to its natural state is part and parcel of that modus operandi. I want to spend my time doing the things that matter to me, and I begrudge every moment I am wasting doing things like putting on hair dye and waiting! I’m still not completely comfortable with the ‘look’ just yet. I believe that stripping the hair of colour and adding the tones that are making it grey right now, has probably damaged it and until it grows out into it’s own shade of greyishness, it’ll need plenty of conditioning. (I’ve just read up about it). And sometimes I feel like Medusa with stringy grey rats tails instead of those long golden locks I had. But I’ll live.

And yes, in the big scheme of things, the colour of my hair is a very small thing compared to the real issues going on in this world right now. But my wee blog is a place I share my emotional journey, as well as the bigger picture, and this is the part of the road I’m on.

It’s been a week of horrendous change OUT THERE – earthquakes and landslides of political upheaval. BREXIT and the present protests, the ongoing refugee crisis, endless ISIS horror, the shaky state of Australia’s leadership . . . homelessness in Auckland. By no means can I address any of these issues with any real grasp of the answer or depth of understanding of the causes. And in fact, for most of that I can do absolutely nothing but look on in dismay. (Fortunately, this is the real grey area, and something we all come to terms with individually, responding as our personalities and consciences dictate.) In the face of all that, for me, there IS a small comfort in dealing with my own personal challenges, and feeling empowered in doing so, that gives me courage to move on and tackle things of greater importance. I hope that these small personal rambles strike a chord with one or two others.

HAVE A GOOD WEEK ALL!