Wellness

We have a daily activity at hair school called Wellness. Wellness is when we take a mental break from whatever project is at hand to focus on something positive and unrelated to school. We take a little breather. We give ourselves a mind treat. Sometimes Wellness is a group discussion of our strengths and goals. Sometimes it's when we all share our holiday traditions. Once we took a Wellness down the street to overwhelm the nearest Starbucks. Usually Wellness is an excuse to watch Adele videos on the big computer screen. Sometimes we watch RuPaul videos. Once we watched a Richard Simmons video and it was a huge failure. The person responsible was banned from suggesting Wellness videos in the future.

At first I thought Wellness was another tiny waste of time, slowly chipping away at the larger waste of time which is everything we do when we don't actually have our shears in hand. But I've grown accustomed to the lackadaisical time management policy that seems to be the cosmetology standard. We're on west coast time all the time, it's like island time. I recently discovered the 'personal Wellness'. It's like a get out of jail free card with no limits or restrictions. You can just "take a Wellness" and scurry out into the wilds of D.P. (downtown Portland) whenever you want as long as you're back within fifteen minutes. And you don't actually have to be back in fifteen minutes as long as when you do come back you claim to have only been gone for fifteen minutes, with conviction. Yesterday I surreptitiously took an hour long fifteen minutes to get supplies for an art project (candy). Usually we use the 'personal Wellness' to go next door and get coffee at Tilt. We call this going to "objectify the Tilt boys". This is usually the only time of the day we encounter straight men, they also make decent coffee. This activity feels morally on par with watching RuPaul videos.