A year ago: blogging begins

A year and two days ago I launched this blog with my first, tentative reasons for dreadlocks.

I know that there's a good amount of negative stereotyping and perceptions about dreadlocks, mostly because I've shared a lot of those perceptions myself.  People who wear dreadlocks are dirty, aimless people who can't get a job, right?

All the hat I ever needed

Even though I was considering them, I really didn't like looking at locked hair.  I would glance the way people do at naked bodies in a public locker room:  curious, but not wanting to stare.  The staring would have been in part from fascination, but at least a little from revulsion.  Even though I had been thinking about them for quite awhile, my emotional reaction that they must be dirty was still mixing it up with the new, more rational understanding that washing locks is not only possible, but a really good idea.  I definitely had a knee-jerk reaction against locks, so much so that my second post, the following day, chronicled how I wanted to hide my dreadlocks once I had them.

When I can't be bothered, it looks like this.

One year later, I look at dreadlocks.  I talk to people about them, asking their reasons for dreadlocks (and please, do send in your reason if you've got one).  It's a conversation starter, and it doesn't feel awkward to me anymore.

One year later, my hat can still fit all of my hair, but not without it looking like I have a beastly occipital bone tumor. While pulling it back right now makes me look like a mangy chicken, a ponytail holder working with my hat pulls off something of a round head profile.

This post is the beginning of a new, regular feature for this blog, called one year later.  In each post, instead of simply talking about myself, I will talk about how I was talking about myself a year ago, and then talk about how differently I talk about myself now than I did then.  I hope that this feature will allow me to create new, self-absorbed content with a minimum of effort, while avoiding a metaphysical feedback loop which could eliminate all traces of me from the space-time continuum.

Luckily for you, my reader, if I fail you will never have read any of this in the first place.