If you’ve made it to Week 4 with me, you deserve a pat on the back.  You have literally outgrown many of the men around you, most likely.  Out of the few men who try growing a beard in this day and age, even fewer make it this far without bending their knee to the cruel itch.  And for making it this far, your reward is no more itch.  Please, if you are still somehow experiencing itch, then I have to assume that you have neglected my advice of using beard oil.  And if you’ve made it this far with no more itch without beard oil, then kudos to you, too.  However, the health of your beard hair will suffer over the next few months with drying and split-ends.

The Glory of Week 4 is no more itch with a tease of the shape and growth to come.

The Glory of Week 4 is no more itch with a tease of the shape and growth to come.

You can clearly see in the photo that I have some extended growth from my mustache and chin.  The sideburns may also have annoying looking fly-aways.  You may start to notice your mustache hairs hitting sandwiches and other foods that you bring to your mouth.  You’ll get used to all of this soon enough, but the important thing to avoid is trimming any of these antennae.  Be sure to use beard oil so that the ends of these stray hairs don’t bother you much when they touch your lips or other bare skin.  The use of beard balm now may be possible, and you may want to start practicing using it especially if you have any specific shaping in mind, especially the mustache curl.  Think of those bamboo plants that they sell curled around a stick.  Do you think they let that bamboo stalk grow straight up and then tried to train it to curl around that stick?  No way…  The established linear shape would rebel against any training.  Either the trainer would have to spend months if not YEARS getting it to bend to his will, or the bamboo stick would snap and die in the effort.  The easiest and most logical way is to start training it from birth.  So the same is true for your beard hair.

When I grew my first beard last year, I started combing my mustache hairs downward, because it’s all I ever knew from pictures and people I knew.  It just seemed to make sense considering that the rest of my beard hair was doing fine growing downward.  But I suddenly realized that if I continued to do that, the hairs would eventually grow to cover my mouth, and no girl would want to kiss me.  And forget girls, what would eating food be like??  So it wasn’t until the end of the 2nd month that I started brushing my mustache hairs outward to the sides.  But my hairs rebelled, and it took the next 4 months (6 months of beard time) to finally start seeing obedience.  I’m hoping that this time around, I’ll do things right since I learned a lot from growing my last full beard. And now you will benefit from my mistakes and experience by continuing to read on…