How To Succeed (If I Had To Make A Guess)

This blog is for entertainment purposes only. Now and then I like to share some advice or tongue-in-cheek wisdom and if you get something out of that I think that’s fantastic. But I don’t really know anything. One BIG thing that I do NOT know how to do is be successful. If I were successful then I wouldn’t be the dear struggling naïve young adult that I am. And to the reader who emailed me — I’m really not Kate Mara.

Back when I used to take Ambien, I would get hit by my brain’s obsession of spiraling my thoughts around in my head as I was trying to drift off to sleep. This is why I don’t take Ambien anymore. I would also talk very loud in my sleep. That’s another good reason not to take ambien. Once in my half-awake/half-asleep dreamlike place, I wrote a list titled:

HOW TO BE SUCCESSFUL

*SIDE NOTE: I found this in my old notebook and my handwriting at the time was not very legible.

1. GET A TWIN! (Yes, I really did think this was a good idea, and no; I have no idea what it means either.)
2. GET PEOPLE TO CALL OTHER PEOPLE FOR ME, LIKE THEY WORK FOR ME. (???I don’t know where I was going with this???)
3. Hasgbjahg Fgsfs— (the writing got kind of difficult to read here.)

Listen, I don’t recommend doing anything on this list in the great name of success. And I think that deep down, I’m afraid of success, which is why I don’t attempt it. What if I actually do really well in life? Then what? I know, it’s weird, it’s like a Joaquin Phoenix complex or something.

But I think I have some general ideas as to how to be successful:

1. Do something that scares you. By which I mean, do NOT inject poison into your eyes or put caterpillars on your face, but rather do something outside of your comfort zone because it will help you grow.

2. Don’t beat yourself up when you fuck up. Because it’s over with. If you could go back in time and change it, you would, and you know you would. Let that be enough. Realize that there is an ocean of time ahead of you that will give you many chances to not fuck up.

3. Don’t be afraid to ask for help. If you don’t ask for help then the answer is always “NO.”

4. Don’t be too polite. Do NOT be a miserable bitch. Do NOT throw hot coffee in peoples’ faces. DO NOT slash someones’ tires. What I mean by this is basically, stand up for yourself! The only one who can be your biggest defender is you. Unless you’re in court, then I would seriously get a lawyer. You never represent yourself, that’s Law & Order Rule #1. (Rule #2? “When I left, she was still alive!”). Eleanor Roosevelt once said something like, “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” That unlikely historically famous feminist bitch was right! So when someone does you a favor say “Thank you” and move on. SAYING “THANK YOU” ONCE IS PLENTY IF YOU MEAN IT. Remember, desperation makes people nervous!

5. Don’t compare your progress to someone else’s. This one is hard for me because, as we all know, I am super jealous. If I were a super hero, jealousy would be my superpower. And what a dumb superpower, it wouldn’t even be able to help anyone! It’s tempting to want to look at Phoebe Caulfield and say, “Wow, Phoebe Caulfield  is doing everything right and I’m not” and then to cry about it, but don’t! Because for everything that Phoebe Caulfield has, there’s something YOU have that SHE doesn’t. There always is! Because if she didn’t…SHE’D BE YOU. DID I JUST BLOW YOUR EFFING MIND? Really though, we’re all doing our best in this world and some people get there faster than others, but we all get there. Again, just look at the odds! Odds are by the time you die you’ll have done something great in your life! Even Phil Spector, who is now sitting in jail for murder, still changed music forever!! Woah!!

I’ll stop there for now. Decide to be successful! And just holler if you need me. I’m so much better at giving my advice than taking my advice.

♥E

No one cares about your quarter-life crisis.

↓ I recently went through what I thought was a difficult period of having to grow up and try to be an adult (kind of) but apparently that has a name: quarter-life crisis. It’s big business now. Every magazine aimed for young women is sure to include an article about your quarter-life crisis and how to get through it. Some magazines that have covered it include Marie Claire, Glamour, and even NYLON. These articles mainly state that this is a scary thing and you’re allowed to be scared and here’s how to not be scared anymore, you scared thing.

Do we really think we are the first generation to feel pressure to go to school, find a job, make money, be successful, meet the demands of our parents, and want more than a mediocre and conventional life?

I forget where I read this but assumed magazine goes into saying that now there’s a thing called a “pre-quarter life crisis.” It’s described as, “the awkward transition phase into adulthood, which happens at some point in your early to late twenties.”

We have to be the only generation to break down these decades in our lives as a “crisis.” None of this is a “crisis.” This is growing up. This is being an adult. This is life.

I have never met anyone who freaked out about their “quarter-life crisis” who wasn’t entitled and privileged, myself included. This is for them, for me, and for the people who coined this phrase.

I love my friends. I understand they face challenges in life. I do too. I understand that sometimes you feel pressure and that it’s okay to feel sad or frustrated. It’s okay to cry. It’s okay to admit that you’re having a hard time finding your way in life.

But Jesus Christ, get it together. You think this is tough? You think your life is tough because you don’t like your school so you quit and decide to take a semester (or year???) off and  be a “blogger” and shuffle between two jobs? So you’re calling this a quarter-life crisis instead of calling it making mistakes and becoming an adult and being disappointed that you’re not immediately successful? You think life is unfair because Lena Dunham wrote a TV show about your exact same problems but she’s the one getting paid for it, not you? (Side note: everything above was mostly aimed towards me)

Everyone who writes about being in their late-teen/twenties writes about it as though they are scribbling on parchment while riding in a covered wagon across America with the great hope that, at most, they’ll get a job and make the absolute minimum to support their spouse and 6 kids, as grandpappy is slowly dying of cholera in the back and probably won’t make it. “Tell the people,” they weep, hoping that the Pony Express will get their letter in time, “Tell the people that I have to maintain a college career and work at a hipster bar that’s totally annoying and I had 3 interviews for a graphic design internship I would have been really good for but probably won’t get so now I’ll have to take a second job at this tacky coffee shop. The people need to know.”

♥ E

do-over

There comes that point in every woman’s life where she abruptly declares, “I hate men. I’m becoming a lesbian”, is where I’ve face planted in my life right now. I’m not actually becoming a lesbian. But what I am deciding to do is something I’ve never done but have been advised to do so for several years. I’m going to focus on me. I’m always so enthralled in the midst of occupying myself in trying to make someone else happy and meet their needs and demands, all while I neglect my own feelings and needs until they reach their limit and erupt, resulting in me crying into a bowl of Cheerios at 2 A.M. It is a viscous cycle.

But nobody else but me can break the cycle. Which is where me working on things about myself that need to be changed finds itself involved. Sometimes it’s not the other person who needs to change, it’s you. As much as I hate to admit it, there’s quite a few things I really like about myself that I would never change. But then there’s so many things I want to fix. Like how tense I am sometimes.

Being tense is a specialty of mine. It’s weird because most of the time I’m pretty laid-back but when I would most like to be easy going is when I’m at my most nervous state of being. I want to believe in myself but I let life get in the way. I try to plan everything out. I try not to psych myself up. But I think it’s back firing. I just want to have unwavering belief in myself. Do you have any idea how hard that is? To block out all of the “logical” reasons why something won’t work out for you and to focus instead on how great you are and how everything is going to work out somehow? You know who’s really good at doing that? Kanye West.

God, I love Kanye West.

But screw everything else. Anything about myself that I can control is changeable. That’s it. I’m in one of the primes of my life right now. I shouldn’t be wasting it on petty things that in 5 years will make me say “Why the hell was I so anxious about that?” I should be spending it by being my breezy self, getting hammered all the time, sleeping around, and making bad decisions. Jokes of course. But being breezy and the whole “Ob la di ob la da, life goes on” is how I should be doing things.

Or you can always take the other route and fake it till ya make it.

Roll with the punches.

♥E