Aug. 31, 2022 - Headless Mammoth Hoggin' Day 31
AA Tags: #RawHoggin #MammothMafia
This is my second time doing AA, and while I can't say that I'll never do AA again, I might skip ultra nightmare mode next time and swap out the blade as needed. Using the same blade for the entire month is something that I know I can accomplish but doing so doesn't really provide any benefits to my general shave routine, and in fact it might introduce some bad habits like excessive buffing. Using unfamiliar equipment (boar brush, shavette) for the entire month was quite beneficial in building technique which is what I'm most interested in for AA but I don't think I'll have the same needs to do so each year. I'll probably sit out next year unless there is a particularly interesting challenge that I want to try out and not feel like I'm missing out on sub participation.
The raw hoggin' challenge honestly was a great idea for AA (props to /u/EldrormR), and the approximate timeline for a decent break-in of a boar brush lines up nicely with the length of the month so there is a nice sense of accomplishment at the end. The boar brush also gradually became more enjoyable to use which seemed much nicer in contrast to the MMOC challenge where the last week seemed like torture to a lot of the participants. If I had been completely new to shavettes, I don't think I would have had a great time and definitely would not have felt all that confident by the end of 31 days.
It's also interesting to note how certain challenges built comradery among the participants while others seemed to fly under the radar. I do think the number of challenges is taking away a bit from the spirit of AA, but they also do a good job of spicing up an otherwise boring month of monotony. I appreciated the exercise of documenting my experience throughout the month but it also became a bit tedious over the course of the month. In the end, AA is probably meant to be a shared month of suffering in which we all come out with /u/j33pguy13 level thrill for all things wet shaving again.
Time to go back under my rock.
sotd.djudgement_invitations: [<DjudgementInvitation 4224>, <DjudgementInvitation 4278>]