It was about three and a half years back that I decided to grow a beard. I did it on a whim, as an exercise in sheer laziness, and for what, I assumed, would be a rather short stint.

But, after a month, having drawn nearly positive reviews, I decided to stick with it. I settled into a medium length – setting five on my now trusty Remington Precision MB-30 Beard Trimmer – and weathered such early bearded conundrum as whether I should shave pre-tropics, to ward off the apparent peril of inverted beard-tan should I stick with the beard in the short term, only to decide to lose it mid-fall.

As the priority of faux-aged gravitas waned in favor of general indie hipness, I clicked my Remington down to setting four, and then, about nine months back, to setting three. By now, even a day or two past setting three scruffiness (or, as per this weekend, four solid days past), I start to look and feel a bit too ‘man of the woods’ for my own taste. So, increasingly, I’ve taken to nearly daily trimming. And to nearly daily neck-hair trimming, a region I previously shaved completely, as it – if allowed to grow past its current merely scruffy state – yields a distressingly Amish look.

But, through it all, and despite subtly varying forms, I stuck with the beard. A few times along the way, I shaved completely, curious to see whether I still preferred my more hirsute self. And, each time, the beardless version looked, well, a bit less like me.

So, for the foreseeable future, at least, the beard stays in the picture. Which, taking into account savings on razors and shaving cream alone, should get me retired to the Bahamas just that much sooner. Albeit with a rather serious inverted beard tan.