It’s a rainy June afternoon in London, which is exactly the sort of thing everyone spent all of last summer warning me about. And yeah, it’d be a little bit more beautiful if there was blue sky on my day off instead of clouds and a more-than-light drizzle, but the atmosphere of a summer rainstorm has its own sort of magic. It’s warm, and damp, and grey, and green, and saturated. If you’ve got the option to spend that kind of afternoon inside with a view, there are worse June days to be had.

I have done a markedly poor job of adventuring this spring/summer, and I’m determined to fix this. I may not have any current plans regarding how to do so, but I mean, this time last month I hadn’t even booked the last-minute trip to Malta that I went on two weeks ago. I doubt I’m going to jet off anywhere in the next two weeks, but for now the fact that I COULD is satiating enough. Besides, Malta was glorious, four days of lying in eighty-degree sunshine listening to Lizzo and re-applying sunscreen every hour on the hour and one day of solo-touring Valetta as I sweat my bodyweight trekking from Instagram post to Instagram post. The thrill of it will carry me through several rainy afternoons to come.

I will also make do with the residual historical passion left from plowing through two Crusader-era novels about Richard I during said holiday, and a renewed focus on creating and committing to a social calendar. Last night was a bizarrely solid step forward in both regards, spent catching up with someone from my UEA days at an art showing at circa 1720 The Jerusalem Tavern. It was an excellent night of discussing cathedral pilgrimages, a shared love of old buildings, and the magical aura of places like Winchester and York.

Yesterday marked the expiration of the last drop of patience I had in the growing-out-my-hair process. That sort of patience is always in short supply in my life, because once you have buzzed your hair, anything longer is considered high maintenance. I was having a moment, though, the record-setting kind where for almost a whole WEEK I thought I might have the strength of spirit to have a slightly long, curly-haired pixie cut. To give up my preferred silvery buzzed cousin of a pixie in favor of something a little more approachable, more akin to cute than “don’t fuck with me”. But yet again, it was not to be. I walked by a barber shop on my way to kill an hour before meeting up with said friend and walked out with significantly less hair. And let me tell you, that cycle is some well-known, battle-scarred territory for me.

My close friends know that I struggle a lot with the concept of looking feminine. I don’t mind not looking feminine, and in fact actively revel in wearing my hair in a way that most people would call striking and/or androgynous. But when you’ve hit age thirty and five years of being single, even the most confident woman has a moment of self-reflection that involves examining how she looks and acts, wondering if that one thing is the reason a partner has eluded her all these years. And as a woman that wears her hair shorter than almost all others, my hair cut is an easy target whenever my self-criticism rears its rude head.

The genuine truth is that 99% of the time, I love how I look and I don’t give a shit if it’s not appealing to men. My style is one of my favorite things about me and I absolutely would not change a thing about it just to attract a guy. But it is also genuinely true that that 1% moment, the one where I suffer crippling self-doubt and feel like I’ll always be alone, is a real fucking doozy. I miss having a partner. It doesn’t matter how much I love myself; it’s really hard to admit that I’ve just gotta wait around for a guy that’s not put off or intimidated by or unattracted to a girl that chooses to look like me.

What gets me through those 1% moments is realizing that I’m not waiting: I’m just otherwise occupied. I have the luxury of other things to focus on and pursue and get excited about on my own. While it’s a little frustrating that my hair regrowth rate seems to line up perfectly with the creep-in rate of my self-doubt, I’ve learned to live with it (and my hair). Men might not be a fan on the whole, but just today I caught eyes with a lovely woman in her forties shopping with her friend. They stopped me and told me they’d been watching me since I came into the store because my hair was so amazing, and the friend pulled out her phone to show me the short hairstyles she’d just been looking up because I’d inspired her so much.

Having said all of that, you could argue that I’m leaning real hard into my haircut as being single-handedly responsible for my singledom. Which is entirely possible too.

Except you’re wrong, because what’s NOT to love about a loud, charming 12th century English history nerd covered in tattoos that can dad-joke with the best of them? I am flawless and so is my haircut.