The Self Help Guide to Overcoming Positivity

I need inspiration and by inspiration I mean I need beer.

I did not write this blog post drunk, I will not wake up tomorrow hungover. I guess I could be thankful for that.

If I had gotten drunk I could spin you tales, and then you could think of me as your (slightly) older, creepy uncle that only gets phone numbers from girls who can’t say no to phone number requests, and then sits outside their apartments jerking off in a yellow colored van all the while texting the girl in between placing calls to her phone that go straight to voice mail, followed by her clumsy hang-up all meant to sound like a pocket answer, which we all know is not possible when I hear you mutter, “oh shit” into the speaker phone.

Bitch.

But the good news for my liver may not be good news for my blog readers.

I was hoping for some liquid inspiration tonight, so I walked to the local convenience store for some beer. Nothing makes the process of creating awful blog posts more interesting to me than alcohol.

But the asshat that runs the only store within walking distance of me closes his doors at midnight and forces you to do all your shopping through a pass window the size of a breadbox.  

The window does not have nearly enough room for the clerk to get a 12 pack of Bud Light through. The clerk asked if I wanted to “wait around” while he “broke down the 12 pack and placed all the bottles in bags.” I told him, “Fuck that!” I’d rather go home to be bothered by the twitchy, caffeinated dreams that come with drinking coke and blogging until 9 am.

I have a blog of failure.

People like me have to write about failure. We write about failure because we cannot "create" in the typical sense of the word. Sometimes one of the grand failures we produce becomes a "works of art." But mostly they do not. Mostly they are like this blog, just a chronicle of failure. A sign post. A warning that clues you into estrangement of modern life.  

I imagine that is one reason why a happy person would hate this blog.

Happy People Are Delusional.

Happy people get it all wrong. They get it all wrong because they are so damn optimistic. But optimism is a delusion. It’s the same kind of delusion that pessimism is, and everyone in our culture intuitively understands how delusional pessimism is.

Everyone needs at least one pessimist friend.

I know you like to think of me as your cynical, pessimistic friend. But (as usual) you have it all wrong. I am not a pessimist. I am not cynical. I am realist. The only thing this blog (aka my world view) suffers from is a healthy dose of reality.

If you paid attention in college then you would know that depressed people score more accurately on arrange of tests:

Psychologists Shelly Taylor and Jonathon Brown state that the average “Normal” person is quite self-deluded in three areas.

a) viewing themselves in unrealistically positive terms; b) believing they have more control over their environment than they actually do; and c) holding views about the future that are more positive than the evidence can justify.

Being positive is as crazy as being negative.

Only depressed people like me get a glimpse of reality. That’s why we are depressed.

I tell you this not to burst your bubble of ignorance, but to let you know that I understand reality better than you. So you should really just shut up and listen to the things I tell you.

Reality sucks.

Unconsciously you know that. Hence your evolutionary adaption to being positive. If you actually had to face reality most of you would want to throw yourselves off a bridge, or at least stop going out in public in coffee stained undershirts.

But you don’t. Instead you project your fears and make depressed people feel guilty over seeing reality.

You conflate depression with over-negativity.

I have some advice for you. The next time you come across an area where you need to see reality. Ask a depressed person. Ask them to tell you the truth. Brace yourself because it is probably going to hurt. Not as much as when your boyfriend “corrects” you. But still. It’s bound to hurt.

1. Your ass is what makes you look fat.

2. Your parents ARE disappointed in you.

3. Life IS ultimately meaningless.

You can add to that your whole laundry list of fears and insecurities. Yes, some mirrors distort you body, and some angles in photos can be deceptive, and our society’s obsession over health and beauty is destructive, but you don’t care about any of that.

You want to be special and beautiful.

And fuck it. Who says you aren’t?