Settling down

I have slipped into a new routine. A down pass and up pass avoiding chin and upper lip with the straight. Then across and the bits missed using a DE razor. It's working well. Lovely smooth shaves. I'll stick with this for now and see how it goes. Straight shaving has a number of downsides:

Time and skills needed for stropping and honing.

Time needed to attain skill in using the razor - much more difficult than DE shaving.

Glide of the razor less comfortable than DE.

The shaving ritual of wiping lather on to towel during shaving is more messy than rinsing a DE in the bowl.

And at this stage it seems very difficult to shave against the grain on my neck. That will be a big challenge to master and I'm not trying yet.

On the plus side, my first impression is that the closeness of the shave leads to a softness of the skin which I was not getting with DE shaving. For me, this is what it is all about.

I'm not interested in stropping and honing. Not interested in the nostalgia of straight shaving. I just want the best shave possible and the feeling that goes with it. So it will boil down to one thing. Does the improvement in the end result justify the effort involved?

I intend to become as proficient as I can at all aspects of straight shaving over the next few months. And perhaps I will come to enjoy the new ritual. Then I will decide if I want to keep it up.