Getting REAL and VULNERABLE about my biggest fears

Giving my subscribers more anxiety as all good writers do

Here at Ideas Guy HQ, I tapped out of Halloween. I had a family thing, not to brag, so I spent the night at my parents’ house in metro Detroit handing out candy to trick-or-treaters. One of them went as Doodle Bob. Most of their costumes were surrounded by eight layers of heat techs and coats.

I had no qualms about not participating in official Halloween this year. For the last couple years, I’ve thought it to be a pretty overrated holiday. I never have a good costume and unless there’s an airtight plan for the night it ends in confusion and disappointment. Sorry if that makes me lame. I feel like I have to compensate for that and talk about something else that makes me cool here. But I’m not going to do that because I can’t think of anything.

Anyway, spending Halloween alone in the middle of a quiet cookie-cutter suburb might have been the scariest plan I could’ve had. After all, that’s where most horror movies take place. It would be a lot harder to pull off a lot of these horror plots in cities because there are too many people around.

I was all alone, with nothing but time to think about what truly scares me. At least a haunted house has other presences in it.

So here we are: I’m getting vulnerable about my biggest fears.

Being on the Jumbotron and not noticing

I don’t know how anyone can go to a sporting event and not have their eyes glued to the Jumbotron the whole time waiting to see if they end up on it. (I am a narcissist. But you knew that already because you’re here reading my frivolous newsletter.)

How tragic, how terrifying. To be filmed for the entire arena to see and maybe not even know that your hair looked a little weird. To be perceived by more people than you’d naturally meet in a lifetime and not even know. Although I guess this is kind of just “going outside” now that any 12-year-old can film you for a TikTok at any moment and ruin your life.

Some might read this and think “oh! That’s actually great! It’ll catch you being in the moment!” No. I probably look weird as hell in the moment. Enough!

Accidentally reposting an Instagram Reel

I see this happening all the time now. When someone reposts an Instagram Reel I kind of assume it was accidental, because the “share” and “repost” buttons are so close together; it still doesn’t make it any less humiliating.

Even if it’s an accident, even if everybody knows it’s an accident, you still gave all 1,577 of your followers a peek into your algorithm, and therefore your psyche. No one is safe. Even people I respect are doing this. And I don’t really respect that many people on Instagram generally.

The fact that deodorant colors and branding are so similar

Can we differentiate them a little bit, please? I thought I bought the right one and then I brought it home and it smells like garbage. Then I realized literally all deodorants of the same brand look the same except for a tiny icon or color difference. Kind of a Body Snatchers scenario here. The deodorant you loved and trusted has been replaced by an imposter. Eek!

Salads served on plates

Have fun spending the entire meal pushing leaves around and praying nothing gets on the table and no time enjoying the salad you ordered. Jesus Christ.

Your boss seeing that you play the LinkedIn daily games

LinkedIn has their own proprietary daily games, which are just a hard, obvious ripoff of the NYT daily Mini Crossword, Wordle, etc. They’re kind of fun. Not as fun as the NYT games, but still something for my hands to do on my phone while my brain goes numb, which is apparently my standard for something I’ll spend my valuable time doing.

But there’s a big, big difference between the sweetness of the original New York Times games and the dark underbelly that is the LinkedIn games, which have names like “Tango” and “Queens” and I am very bad at them: all of your Linkedin connections can see that you played that day’s games.

“Sandra Johnson and 19 of your other connections played Queens!” LinkedIn tells me, bright and early, at 8AM every morning. I know somewhere out there my name is on someone else’s notification, because I can’t help but play “Crossclimb” and “Zip” before starting my work for the day. I’m connected with the CEO of my company. I hope he’s not judging me for it.

People who take supplements they heard about on a podcast

I think a hard drug addiction is preferable. It’s at least more understandable than the idea that you seriously believed Athletic Greens would do anything to fix you. Seriously. Take a look in the mirror. There’s lead in that. If you’ve bought more than 3 direct-to-consumer goods in the past year I think you should throw your phone in a river.

A doctor that can see you today, right now

It is ultimately a miracle of modern society that I have the ability to get healthcare basically on-demand if I need it.

However…… however, however, however….

Why don’t you at least have a little bit of a waitlist? Like just a couple days? What do you mean you can get me in right now? Or in fifteen minutes or an hour or whenever I have free time? What do you mean?

Ordering takeout for 1 at Buffalo Wild Wings but the door is locked so you’re stuck banging on the door of a local empty Buffalo Wild Wings for like five minutes until someone lets you in

I had a free 6-piece wing and my time is not that valuable so I wasn’t really scared when this happened to me. But I get that this is humiliating and other people might be scared of it.

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