Hello, dreadlocks community!
I'm a big fan of this site and have been lurking and taking in wisdom for a little while decided it was time to make an account.
Now for some some of my dread-history... (More of the bad and ugly than the good)
I have very thick, strong and relatively straight hair (starts to curl/wave slightly when it reaches shoulder length)... My hair doesn't really tangle and even now my dreads never need ripping apart because of my hair type and texture.
I used a combination of backcombing and twist 'n' rip, finishing the backcombing around the middle of July 2010.
From there, for most of their life, my dreads have been treated like crap! I'm thankful I have such thick hair or it may well have all broken off and fallen out by now!
After backcombing and leaving my hair alone for a couple of weeks I believed my dreads to be falling out (I now know better, but at the time this freaked me out) - my hair went back to being completely straight, but slightly maintaining it's sectioning and over time, even that was disappearing. I then twist 'n' ripped my hair and even re-backcombed a bit over the next 2 months ALL THE TIME. After that up until the 7 or 8 month mark I was twisting and ripping with decreasing frequency from twice a week to once every two weeks. At this stage my hair was dreaded to the point that about 60% of the way down would stay by itself. I don't remember when I started using the "loose hair tool v2.0" (the equivalent of crocheting I guess) but it was somewhere around then... and I continued to use it with great frequency to tidy up loose hairs and eventually blunt the tips.
Around the 1 year mark I had my eyes opened by this site and a couple of others and realised that I had been stupidly damaging my hair and setting it back, when I thought I had been helping it knot up... and that's when I set down my crochet hook for good! Unfortunately, though I now have much more loose hair at the scalp than I probably would doing things properly... but all things considered that's not so bad, seeing as with the rough treatment my hair has endured should probably have left me bald! Surprisingly I suffered no breakage or other easily noticeable hair damage! (Though It's impossible I did all that without damaging it)
Now I wash with Dr. Bronners (peppermint) 1-2 times a week and at least once a month do a baking soda & sea salt / apple cider vinegar deep clean... and other than the occasional hair tea, that's it! (I have seen the light! lol)
Woah that was a longer explaination than expected!
TLDR: Backcombed, twist n ripped for like 8 months, used a crochet hook for 3 or 4 months, now I am better educated and leave them alone and keep them nice and clean.
A little about me as a person...
I'm a really chilled out, peaceful, introverted and thoughtful 20 year old male from New Zealand. I enjoy smoking pot as much as I have money to buy it and having a couple of acid/mushy trips each year. I love music and poetry. I'm currently lacking real direction in life, considering careers in piloting (drug tests are a worry, so if ever, not now) or something computery (not sure if a desk job is really for me, though). All I know at this point is that I want to spent many years traveling the world. I've always felt guilty that animals die for my food but never really did anything about it... until yesterday I decided I'd go a month as a vegetarian and if I can handle the lifestyle change, which I think I can, continue indefinitely. Until I tried pot and psychedelics I was a nerdy kid on the way to a very unfulfilling life where I defined my happiness and success on others terms, valuing money and physical possessions... but thankfully they opened my eyes and I now value self discovery, happiness and friendships above all else. I want to learn to skateboard, snowboard and ride a motorbike... I can solve a 2x2, 3x3, 4x4 and 5x5 rubik's cube and have learned to do so on my own, making my own methods (except for parity errors in the 4x4, which I used to just start again from scratch until I looked up an algorithm). I love music festivals, especially outdoor ones in the summer time! I make my own bracelets and necklaces from 100% natural hemp fiber, and enjoy little craft projects like that which keep my hands busy. I have a good sense of humor and am a fantastic listener.
My favorite poem of all time is Allen Ginsberg's the sunflower of sutra, though I love anything and everything written by Allen Ginsberg and Jim Morrison.
As for music, my favorites are (in no particular order) Tool, Jefferson Airplane, The Beatles, Pink Floyd, Bob Marley, Jimi Hendrix, Sublime, Gorillaz, The Doors, Nirvana, System of a Down, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Parliament Funkadelic, Battle Circus, Queens of the Stone Age, Monkey3, Sound Garden, Alice in Chains, Cake, Metallica, Korn, Rage Against the Machine, Marilyn Manson, Pearl Jam, The Killers, Peter Tosh, Bob Dylan, Sigur Ros, A Perfect Circle, Incubus, Queen, Led Zeppelin and probably more I can't think of right now.
I'm not a massive art connoisseur but I love trippy/psychedelic/surrealist art... especially Alex Gray's work.
So yeah, if you read all that you probably know me pretty damn well by now... and I'm much looking forward to getting to know you all, too! Especially as it seems there's a certain something in attitude, spirit and personality I can't quite put my finger on that most people involved in dreadlock culture seem to share.
updated by @vaughan-teague: 01/13/15 09:10:31PM
