An artist’s rendition of you, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
LOCAL—It’s game over, man. Game over. Your yearly pledge to better yourself has officially failed to take root for an umpteenth consecutive year.
You weigh more than you did at this time last year, despite a similar, ill-fated promise to yourself to ‘work on it’ back then. Granted, you did buy that insanely expensive health club membership with the locked-in contract but somehow, having it to point to was more satisfying than actually using it. Maybe this year’s promise should be to pack that free tote bag they gave you with a towel, water bottle and a change of undies for a trip to the gym, instead of hauling junk food, smokes, K-cups and your iPad to work. If your co-workers can’t hear you slurping and crunching, they can certainly still see your cellulite. Stop. You’re not fooling anyone.
Everyone around you agrees that you still drive like a jerk. Sure, you did make some effort to tailgate and speed less and let people merge more often, until the psychopath that lives in your head started going through the delirium tremens. Now you’re right back to giggling like a rabid schoolgirl whenever you screw someone in traffic, or cursing like a roofer when you get screwed. Chill now; don’t care how. Do mindfulness exercises or masturbate during the commute, but lower your stress stat.
Intellectually, it was another wasted year. Too much Netflix binging, not enough reading, and barely any writing. Even your vocabulary of profanity remained stunted. Take a class in something and actually go. Take a friend, if you still have any, or make a friend if you remember how. Stop worrying about your number of Facebook friends and Twitter followers. Most of them are vain, deluded hosebags like you who aren’t actually interested in anything you post. Pare down the list to people who you actually know or who you actually want to follow.
Live inside your phone less and live out in the real world more. If you must stay on-line, this year, write something thoughtful and original to share on social media instead of re-sharing articles with cool-sounding titles which were possibly also good but you couldn’t actually bring yourself to finish them past the second paragraph. Create something wonderful while ignoring the Likes and RTs that come, or don’t come. True happiness comes from finding satisfaction in contributing to the fabric of the universe, and realizing that the universe doesn’t revolve around you.