Not those kind of dreads! BTW, that’s my friend Liz Kidder. She’s a kick ass thru-hiker and an accomplished dreads artist.

Sometimes I’ll bring up my blog and hit the widget on the side of the page that brings up a random blog post I wrote. How narcissistic is that? Today’s random post was one I wrote back in 2017 that was a prompt from the below book. I had to list things that I dread during the day. When I read the list today I realized that there were quite a few developments from those dreads six years later. I’ve decided to give commentary on them from today’s perspective. Aren’t you thrilled? Updates are {between} those little things.

For the backstory on this series of posts see here.

You wake up with a nameless feeling of dread in your gut, but you can’t figure out what it is.  Write down everything that could possibly happen during the day that could be something for you to dread.

Wow.  Talk about a container full of annelids that’s about to be unlocked (see here for translation).  Going to just totally spitball these off the top of my head:

• My social awkwardness could be taken as being stuck up.
  {Still got it but it’s not as bad as it used to be. When we went full-time RV life in 2020 it kind of pushed me out of my comfort zone and made me more sociable because we are always meeting new people.}
• People who think I have my shit together could figure out that it’s far from the truth, and I’ll be revealed as the imposter I sometimes fear I am.
  {A syndrome I’ll always have!}
• I’ll forget to put clothes on before I go to work.  That shouldn’t be just me dreading that.  You should dread that too.
  {Since I now work from my RV, it has actually happened a few times. On purpose.}
• I won’t be able to fix something that’s my job to fix.  (See that imposter one again.)
  {It’s not really my job to fix things anymore. I do technical writing now but I still help other people fix things and well, they keep asking for it so I must be doing something right.}
• Someone will tell me that my writing sucks.
  {Since writing this I have published six books. A few reviews told me that my writing sucks. A hell of a lot more said it didn’t! Not much of a dread anymore.}
• That I will detach the retina in my other eye and I won’t even be able to see to write.
  {I was right to dread this one. It happened in 2019 and I wasn’t able to see to write for quite a bit.}
• I’ll realize that I am too old to do the long distance hiking I want to do.
  {I’m retiring next summer and in March of 2025 I plan to complete a thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail. I’ll be 57 years old. That dread is still there but I am going to kick it in the teeth like I kick rocks on the trail.}
• That the baby girl I gave up for adoption 22 years ago will show up on my doorstep to tell me she hates my guts.
  {Three years later she didn’t show up on my doorstep but she did show up in my Facebook Messenger. Hate was not on her mind. Since then, I have shown up on her doorstep several times and now she is in my life! If you want to read about why I gave her up, it is in my book, One Byte At A Time: A Memoir (The BBS Years).}
• That something bad will happen to my family and I won’t be able to protect them.
  {A dread that will never go away.}
• That the division in this country will spark the second civil war. (This skews toward political, which I vowed not to write about, but it’s as close as it will get.)
  {Dreading this more everyday.}
• That Doctor Phil and Judge Judy Booty will get together and spawn the anti-Christ.  My wife and my Mother-in-law would probably love this.  So would many others, which is why I dread it.
  {Dreading he/she/it will show up right after the civil war.}
• I will finally drink one to many Mt. Dews when my doctor told me caffeine was the cause of my acid reflux, and my stomach will explode.  Even worse, my doctor will tell me that beer is causing it worse than the caffeine.  Oh well, it was good knowing you stomach.
  {Should have been dreading my liver, not my stomach.}
• That I will press the publish button on this post and I’ll only hear crickets.
  {Still hear crickets but they are my favorite crickets named, Barbara, River, Chris, Kristine, Carolina, Lucy, and all you other Grylidaes that honor me with your comments.}

Well, I guess you can see I’ve got some issues.  I’m close to writing a longer detailed post about them, but not too soon.  This is supposed to be somewhat of a humor blog, and I think this is enough dread for the time being. {Issues. Still got them. Some are gone, some are new, some are old friends. I did write about them later on. Even more later I got some chemical help.}

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