Advice welcome and a few questions.
33M. A bit over a year ago I started to try to take better care of my hair. It's pretty long and I want it to look nice. With this increase in care came me looking at it much more closely. Every few weeks/months I go through a "am I thinning/doing enough" phase. So basically, am I starting to thin out? How does my hair look from your perspective? I have had short hair for most of my life, everyone in my life also has short hair so I am more or less on my own when it comes to advice and knowledge. The growth you see here is like 5 or 6 years of no cutting, with my first cut in that time being about 5ish months ago. We took about 2 inches off.
Some relevant info - I have my hair braided most of the time. I sleep with a bonnet as well. I wash it roughly every 2-4 days. Sometimes longer if I really have nothing going on that week, very rarely do I do every day. I shampoo my scalp, sometimes twice, and only condition from the neck down. Sometimes I use a wide tooth comb for conditioner, sometimes just my fingers. Because I do keep may hair braided so often when it's time to let it out, brush it, and then wash, there can be a good amount of hair that comes out. With it being so long it looks like a LOT of hair. If I had a rough estimate it would be 10-20ish hairs in the shower, an unknown amount in my brush. That's after several days of it being braided. I do have a few pretty intense cowlicks. At the corners of my hairline, when my hair is short they essentially stand straight up against gravity. I do also have one at the crown on my head, not nearly as intense but it's noticeable when it's short. I do not know what my hair type is, I don't even really know how to find that out.
My current hair care products are VERB Ghost shampoo and conditioner. I don't use anything else. Extremely rarely do I blow dry or use any kind of heat. Really only if I need a wash and need to do something right after where I don't want wet hair. Maybe once every few months. I brush before I go into the shower trying to be gentle and working out tangles with fingers when they catch on the brush. The brush I use has decently thick wooden bristles that my stylist recommended. It seems fine but I have extremely minimal knowledge.
General tips would be great. Maybe some reassurance that I am being overly critical of my own hair. Ideally I would love to not use a bunch of products if I need. But if there's something like "oh take x vitamin its really good for hair" or "use x thing once a week" I could probably get behind that. As it stands right now my partner does the braiding on my hair. It's nice because it's a bit of a bonding time and it always feels good. If you have a recommendation of a youtube channel or something that can walk me through some beginner braids/styles I would love to do some learning on my own as well. Thank you for your time.