Growing for Thickness Instead of Length / Reaching Goal Length

[Shanarana]

Good thread.....I think for me my goal lenght will be hip. After that I plan on doing small trims until all my layers have caught up.

[Juliet's Silk]

When I joined (my, long time ago) my long term goal was TBL. When I reached it, my ends were in a state I really didn't like - I had a massive shed and had my hair grown out with little to no trims at all. So I stopped growing and started maintaining, I think in late 2006.
I didn't like it. I mean, on the one hand you stop worrying so much about your hair because you're going to trim off the ends eventually anyway, so you don't have to baby them too much (at least that was my thinking ). For a year, all I did to my hair was washing and bunning, nothing else. Like Dianyla, I almost forgot I had hair. But stopping to grow after you did that for such a long time was quite a change. And now, looking back at pictures I took almost two years ago and seeing no change at all, is a little bit frustrating to say the least. My ends aren't THAT much thicker, so there isn't a real change in thickness as well.
Of course, my hair is much shorter than yours, so maybe your thoughts will be different - I myself have resolved that I at least want to try to reach classic/fingertip length and to cut back if I don't like it. I'm not happy with TBL length anymore although I think it's a very flattering length... but somehow I need a change and TBL doesn't seem long enough to me anymore. I always thought TBL was a length I could be happy with for prolonged periods of time... but having been there for quite a while now, I realize that I want something different.
I know that I needed the time of maintaining because I couldn't have made it to classic with the state my ends were in, the bulk of hair had to catch up a bit, due to that massive shed. But yeah, I'm still wondering how my hair would look like if I hadn't trimmed that much off. I'm not sure about the entire amount, it's something between 10-15". ETA: I checked, I cut about 13" all in all, I made a good guess