Come on. I know you have them. Do it and I will link you.
WHEN MY PETS DIE
That sure was a lucky pet. Now another animal gets to be a very lucky pet!
WHEN I HATE MY JOB
Remember when you were a receptionist and old paunchy bald men just naturally assumed you were stupid and tried to get you to have sex with them and forced you to endure appalling comments about your pretty little face because you desperately needed that $12 an hour they were paying you to use your advanced journalism training to do all of their critical correspondence for them? And when they found out you liked to read, they would say, “What, like … romance novels?” even though you had just fashioned an original proposal for them that included words like “detriment” and “feasible”? And you had to just swallow the anger because you needed groceries badly enough that you were willing to endure their sleazy comments that you would be even more beautiful if you were willing to let them make you smile, and you might feel a little less stressed if you were getting “the right kind of exercise”? Yeah. Let me just point out that you now work at home in your pajamas with a cat in your lap, sipping your tea and watching snow fall outside, for a much better wage. What were you just bitching about, again? You had to edit a particularly tricky paragraph on operant conditioning? Oh. Yeah. Tragic.
WHEN I WANT TO STAB MY EX IN THE FACE
Proportionally speaking, you want to stab him in the face exactly as often now as you did when you were together.
WHEN I MARVEL NOSTALGICALLY AT HOW GREAT MY EX IS, USUALLY WHEN HE IS 800 MILES AWAY AND I REALIZE I NEED TO CHANGE THE CAR HEADLIGHT
Okay, just a minute ago you wanted to stab him in the face. I mean really.
WHEN I AM AFRAID TO DIE
The bad news that you are afraid of is the bad news that you will never get, seeing as you will be too dead for the reception of news.
WHEN I AM STILL AFRAID TO DIE
You were great at not existing. You made it look effortless. You have spent more time not existing than you have doing pretty much anything else. You have literal millennia of experience on your nonexistence resume.
WHEN I AM STILL YET AFRAID TO DIE
I cannot emphasize enough the extent to which you’re wasting your time with this. You should probably just think about something else.
WHEN I AM TERRIFIED THAT MY BOOK WON’T APPEAL TO VERY MANY PEOPLE
Books far more horrible than anything you would ever admit to writing have enjoyed more widespread commercial success than you could ever hope for, so it’s not like the stakes were that high to begin with. You might as well just write what you want to. Maybe, if you are phenomenally, phenomenally lucky, it will be just one person’s favorite book for just a moment. Wouldn’t that be nice?
WHEN I AM TERRIFIED TO EVEN LOOK AT MY BOOK AND MY TYPING IS LITERALLY PARALYZED AND OH MY GODDDD
“Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life, and it is the main obstacle between you and a shitty first draft. I think perfectionism is based on the obsessive belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting each stepping-stone just right, you won’t have to die. The truth is that you will die anyway and that a lot of people who aren’t even looking at their feet are going to do a whole lot better than you, and have a lot more fun while they’re doing it.” –Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird
WHEN I AM CONVINCED MY BOOK WILL NEVER BE PUBLISHED
You will be lucky to even finish it, hot shot, so you’re sounding pretty obnoxious right now.
NO, SERIOUSLY, WHAT IF IT DOESN’T GET PUBLISHED?
Oh for God’s sake. Technology today is so amazing that you could publish it on Amazon for $0.99 and anyone with a Kindle or even a computer could read it for a dollar. No one is going to make you sell it out of the back of your car while wearing a sandwich board or anything. Do you even have any real problems? Ever? Is there a place more namby-pamby than the First World? Is there a Zero-th World? You live there.
WHEN I AM WORRIED I MIGHT BE MAKING THE WRONG LIFE DECISION
You have made like four thousand decisions and always felt happy that you chose whatever you chose, because you get so excited about everything that only five minutes have passed before your giant decision is reaffirmed in your mind by some other tiny pleasant circumstance. “If I hadn’t gotten divorced right when I did, I would never have found this bouncy ball on the courthouse sidewalk!” You think that can’t happen? What if it were one of those big clear bouncy balls full of glittery blue turbulence they sell at the bookstore? Those ones that you cradle fondly every time you are there while you lament your possession of a life that could not in any way make good use of a bouncy ball of glittery blue turbulence? Yeah. That’s what I thought.
WHEN I AM INJUSTIFIABLY HESITANT
Just do it.
WHEN I AM BAD AT SOMETHING
With very, very few exceptions, it is not possible to be good at something without being bad at it first.
WHEN I FEAR SOME INNER LACK OF APTITUDE
Practice has been scientifically isolated as being far and away the largest factor in accomplishment.
WHEN I FEEL STUPID
You can’t feel stupid unless you just managed to learn something. Congratulations!
WHEN I DECIDE THAT I AM FAT AND UGLY
If you could get a fresh new genetic roll of the dice, right now, under the condition that you had to take whatever random DNA you wound up with, would you? No? Then you lucked out. Shut up.
WHEN I AM HURT OR ANGRY
Very few people roll out of bed every morning and say, “Today I’m really going to try to suck on purpose.” It is really not very likely that you know any of them.
WHEN I AM AFRAID
You’re okay. (repeat)
WHEN I AM SAD
Without this, happiness, gratitude, and empathy would all be impossible. Look at you, industriously setting useful emotional benchmarks for convenient comparison purposes.
WHEN I BECOME CONVINCED THAT NO ONE REALLY CARES ABOUT ME
Go read it. Again. Come on, go read it. You’ll feel better.
WHEN I AM STRICKEN BY THE NOTION THAT I WILL BECOME LONELY AND DEPRESSED WHEN I AM ELDERLY BECAUSE EVERYONE HAS BABIES AND FAMILIES AND I DON’T
Your favorite thing to do is curl up with the cat and read a book. You routinely turn down exciting social engagements on the weekends just to do this. Your idea of an exciting time involves a bowl of mashed potatoes, a cup of tea, and a space heater. You have galloping social anxiety and have frequently wished a pill existed that could make you go deaf for the day. You haven’t spoken to a human being for four days and you didn’t even notice until I pointed it out. You have made elderliness into a lifestyle choice. Technically, everyone was born to get old, but you? You really were.
WHEN I BECOME CONVINCED THAT WHOEVER I’M DATING IS THE LAST STOP ON THE LOVE TRAIN AND NO ONE ELSE WILL EVER BE INTERESTED
Never once has this proven to be a problem. Should your luck ever run out, that will be an exciting opportunity to do all the things you always sort of wanted to do but were too considerate to force your significant others to suffer through, like enduring the adjustment phase of the No-Poo method or joining the Peace Corps or living in a yurt.
WHEN I AM WISHING I HAD A PONY OR A BOAT OR A MACBOOK AIR WITH A SOLID-STATE HARD DRIVE
You have more amenities and luxuries at your fingertips than kings and queens used to. Two words: indoor plumbing.
WHEN MY FLESH IS TRYING TO CRAWL OFF MY BODY AND I AM AFRAID OF SOMETHING BUT I DON’T KNOW WHAT IT IS
Wait … when was the last time you brushed your hair and put on some mascara and went outside? It’s called fresh air. People go get some of it sometimes. There’s like a whole figure of speech about it. Maybe you’ve encountered that. Also, it might help to gather some confirmation from someone other than your pets that you are actually visible.
WHEN IT’S GOOD, WHICH IS AT LEAST LIKE NINETY PERCENT OF THE TIME
How on earth are you getting away with this? Enjoy the crap out of it!
WHEN IT’S BAD
Think of it as an opportunity to shave off a transparently thin sliver of karmic debt from the mounting pile of it you have accrued over your middle-class existence. This makes it at least marginally less likely that the universe will eventually spot the error on its spreadsheet that made your life so easy in the first place and then correct its mistake by dropping an anvil on your head.
WHEN IT’S REALLY, REALLY BAD
This too shall pass.
——-
Participant(s):
Blue Yon Belly
Moose
Torpid Trifling
15 Comments
I think I’m going to print this out and read it every day. Brilliant advice.
I think my favorite is the one about being too dead for the reception of news. I’m still chuckling!
I just googled the “No-Poo Method.” It’s not what I thought it was. Thankfully.
WHEN I AM DEPRESSED
At this moment, your conscious mind is like a bombsight. You may not MEAN to be so destructive, but I’m sure you’ve noticed a pattern, right?…
- Focus on something (job, boyfriend, education, existence).
- Red blinking lights, whooping siren, single tear trickling melodramatically down your (ugly! stupid! incompetent!) face.
- KABOOM!
Try not to focus on anything with the bombsight, okay? Think of neutral things. Like green seedless grapes.
Nice cold juicy ones. And what baby iguanas must look like. And whether or not they’d eat little tiny slivers of the aforementioned grapes.
WHEN I AM CONSIDERING DOING SOMETHING NASTY AND VINDICTIVE
Would doing so release a little squid-ink glurt of negativity into the world? Yup. Do you feel the world really needs more negativity? Nope. And was the original offense (displaying a pro-life bumper sticker on one’s vehicle, cutting in line in front of me at Cinnabon) really egregious enough to make YOU compromise your own morals? Probably not, buckeroo. Now simmer down and order your damned cinnamon roll.
WHEN I AM WORRIED I AM A SHITTY PARENT
The majority of people give no thought whatsoever to their parenting. They’re largely reactive,synthesizing energy using chlorophyll – no, wait! That’s plankton! Anyway. The fact that you’re concerned about your parenting means you’re probably doing a-okay.
WHEN I AM WORRIED I AM A SHITTY EMPLOYEE
You are not performing trauma surgery. The work of your organization – from the janitors all the way up to the chairman of the board – is largely meaningless. And everyone else surfs the ‘net exactly as much as you.
WHEN I AM SELF-FLAGELLATING ABOUT SOME OTHER PERCEIVED PERSONAL FAILURE
Are you being hard on yourself because you honestly expect it to result in some sort of positive change, or are you being hard on yourself because it feels soooo good to yank off the scab and poke around in the wound with a non-sterile object (say, a paperclip you found on the ground outside the bus station)? WELL? And how’d you get that metaphorical scab in the first place? Yeah, that’s right… by gently running a cheese grater over the tenderest of your tender little insecurities.
WHEN I AM AWAKE AT 5 AM, POSSIBLY NUDE AND COVERED IN VOMIT
This will make a good story!
And I LOVE this post, BTW… even more than I love the other ones.
Excellent meme! More fun than random facts, more potential for neurotic narcissism and navel gazing than an average entry! What’s not to like? Thanks for the great idea! I learned how much I like to lie and deny to help me through the tough times!
Amazing, girl. I can’t wait to read your book. It WILL be great. Do you have my new mailing address so that you can send me a still-warm-from-the-printer personal paper copy when you finish it? ‘Cause I want to read it on paper. Please.
I just thought you should know that I always eyed the clear bouncy balls of glittery turbulence wistfully, but I was pretty sure I was too old/boring/entrapped-in-a-tiny-apartment/lame for one. Then I finally boought one, and hey! In a life that previously had no room for clear bouncy balls of glittery (pink) turbulence, I carved a little space. That space is outside, in my driveway, on any sunny or semi-sunny morning, in case you were wondering. And having this ball is totally, totally rad. Sometimes I just rotate it in my hands and stare into the sparkly depths until I completely lose track of ddscklfitrrrrrrrrr wait what was that? I think I just achieved nirvana.
Kay, but you really should try the No Poo Movement. Significant other or not.
Yes to everything. You should start a cult. I’d join. (I already HAVE, truth be told.)
I may be a bit too neurotic to do this, but I may try next week.
I just want to say to you, if your book is even remotely written by you and not a monkey pretending to be you, that I’d buy it. And shit woman, Sarah Palin wrote a book. Any idiot can write. But you write in a way that is captivating and amazing. So yep, that’s my opinion. Crap…I swear I’m not a stalker.
Hey, you think I could throw Palin’s book to Russia from her house?
Crud, I maybe shouldn’t hit post. Gah, I’m rambly tonight. Hmmm…fuck it.
The next time I get grief from my friends about being too optimistic, I’m going to show them this post. Love it. Proof that the silver lining exists and it’s not just a figment of my first grade teacher’s imagination.
I did it! The meme! Because I love you. <3
I was following links on blogs today and wound up here. This is really a great list! Good things to remember!
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[...] aprons, melting cheese, and the sudden betrayal of a seemingly innocent pineapple – devised a meme where you share your coping mechanisms honed via years of Thinking Too Much With The Thinking, it [...]
[...] 27, 2010 by prettyis M sent me this link. Read it. Print it out and tape it to your fridge. i love it. PS the no-poo method is totally not [...]
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