I Am So Excited!

People are beginning to visit MY blog!!

Ok...so I have had all of three visitors in the last two days (thanks ladies for making a sister's week!). One thing you all will learn about me as you follow my blog is that I am easily amused/excited/entertained. (Also that my use of asterisks, hyphens, parentheses, slashes, and ellipses is off the chain...)

Blaqkofi stopped by yesterday. AND she left comments. AND she told me that me and my locks are beautiful. Woo-hoo! Hers was one of the first SL blogs I discovered and I've read it from beginning to end and I love it! It's one of the best out there! Great info, wonderful pics. And she graciously replies to people who comment and ask questions. I'm a newbie and I told her that I want to be a lock diva like her when I grow up...

If you're new to SL research and blogging and you haven't visited hers already - check it out the first chance you get!

She liked my blog! I feel like a little kid who wrote a fan letter to a celebrity and got a personal phone call with an invitation to lunch in reply. (As you follow my blog, you will also note my child-like enthusiasm for things...)

It's just that I started my blog almost 4 months ago, but I've been lurking all this time. I'm the person who contacted Maryee back in February about how to join the club because as I wrote in her post comments, I was just so impressed with her blog and those she has links to. I thought the DFW gatherings and other events were an amazing idea. I noticed that even those who were not in the same geographic area were still very close and supportive of one another and that really appealed to me. I wanted to get in on the action!

She had very good advice, but I refrained from commenting on other blogs precisely because I didn't want anyone to wonder who I was and take a look at mine. I just slapped together a few quick posts in the beginning. I had several drafts sitting in storage waiting to be finished and rounded out. I didn't post any pictures. All and all, it was not a very pretty site. (And I do mean 'site', not 'sight.' Although it was most definitely neither!)

When I published the post announcing my SL installation, Maryee extended an invitation for me to join the LHBE, but I declined at the time because I had no pictures and felt like my site was ugly and unfinished. It wasn't the first impression I wanted to make.

I also knew I wouldn't have time to update it very often. I have no posts at all for the month of April. At the time I had just lost my job and my Dad was diagnosed with cancer. And now Maryee is dealing with family illness and a few other pressing concerns. (I understand completely because I have the same kind of chaos in my personal life right now.) So I'm not sure when I'll get a spot on the Exchange. And that means the only way for me to get traffic in the meantime is to visit other blogs one by one and comment and hope people decide to take a look at mine. And so far everyone has...yep...all three!

I have to apply the same patience I want to have about growing my locks to this process of getting the word out about my blog and being 'discovered'. I've made a start.

I'm very happy about the new look of my blog. I think Maryee and Carmen were the only 2 people who ever saw my 'rough draft.' I can't know for sure because I didn't have a counter yet, but it certainly wasn't anything to write home about. I wouldn't have visited twice. But now I'm proud of it, like when you move out of your dinky little apartment into your first house. Even though it may not look like much to other people, to you it represents a huge milestone and a great accomplishment. You want to have a housewarming and invite all your friends.

Maryee was right...blogging is terribly addictive, even though I am not working the 9 t0 5 right now, I still have things I must do, so...

I must bid my burgeoning fan base adieu....(too much?)

You will also notice that I am very tongue-in-cheek.

Sometimes I am over-the-top with self-confidence and sometimes I am completely self-effacing. I like to think it balances out...

Before and After

In the beginning when I started researching SLs, I couldn't get enough of before and after pics. I wanted to have some idea what mine would look like. I know that no two heads or hair textures are the same, so you can never be 100% sure what you'll get, and many people have said that lurking leads to lock envy and lock confusion, but I have to say it really helped me a lot. I did see several women whose hair looked like mine in before pics; and that helped serve as a pretty accurate predictor of what my locks would look like.
So, I thought it would be helpful to sisters who are on the fence for me to include a few before and after pictures.

I've mentioned before that my haircut was very layered. These pictures were taken about three months before I started my locks. When you compare these to the pics I posted on May 14, you get a good idea of how much length I lost.

These pics were taken the day my locks were finished.

I feel obligated to add that I have been wearing my hair natural and/or lightly texturized for 15 years, so I was pretty in touch with my hair's texture before I made the decision to lock. If you are starting from hair that has always been chemically processed there is no way to imagine or predict what it will do in its natural state - locked or otherwise. I was able to hazard a guess because I have worn my hair in so many different natural hairstyles. I have especially experimented with different sizes and methods of twisting and coiling it - styles which are inherently similar to methods used to lock. And I was still very uncertain about how my hair would look and behave in SLs. And I was still surprised by what I ended up with - albeit pleasantly.