Figure 1: Because Marshawn is a cupid, that’s why.
February is a weird month. Real holidays are over, the sun sets around 3:00pm, and goddammit the most commercial, disappointing holiday on earth is around the corner.
What’s worse is the singles turn into cynical winos and the couples get obnoxiously baha-sucker-we’ve-found-love-and-you-haven’t allll over the internet. Then there’s the random few who ignore all that and haven’t given up on their New Year’s resolutions, making the rest of us feel bad about quitting our weight loss goals…but a tiny bit better about ourselves that we aren’t taking gym selfies every damn day.
This isn’t an exhaustive list of the people of February, but those are the majority, at least in my world. This leaves the rest of us at their mercy as they take over Facebook, Twitter, et al., forcing us remaining social media prowlers to long for our true calling as gardeners.*
*I say gardeners because none of you are gardeners. Nope, you are on the internet right now reading this or the annoying aforementioned posts. Gardeners aren’t on the internet all day. They work. Unlike you.
So what I can offer are some things to cheer you up and get you out of the February funk. I fall victim to its power as well, so I don’t say any of this with smugness or real authority, simply in camaraderie that we are all in this together. Thinking about these things can surely get you through this insufferable month, no matter where you are in life.
At Least Your Team Isn’t the Seahawks
Figure 2: Uuuuuuuugh.
Mine is, so I had the fucking worst first week of February ever. I felt bad for everyone who had to talk to my mourning crabby self, but worse for me because I had to deal with me 24 hours a day. I’ve read enough commentary on why we didn’t give the ball to Lynch but still….WHY GOD, WHY?!?!
If your team is the Seahawks, well, my condolences, fellow 12. I’ll hang with you in solidarity as we go drown our sorrows in 2014 Super Bowl highlights and superfluous bags of skittles because let’s face it, this still burns.
At Least You Aren’t Kanye West
Seriously. Depending on how you look at it, being married to a porn star with a child named after a compass could be enough reason enough to believe your life is better than his. But given that his brain function has slowed to the drudge-like level of wholly believing that Beyonce – a fine performer, yes – is more of an artist than Beck….well that’s the bottom of the barrel.
Figure 3: Yay that’s not you!
You aren’t Kanye, so you are winning no matter what you’re doing right now. Even if it’s picking your nose and your office mate just caught you but won’t say anything and now it’s really awkward.
Well I’m not polite and yes I saw you and good God, get a hold of yourself. This is why we can’t have nice things.
We Lost Stephen Colbert, But We Still Have Jon Stewart
Wait…what…hang on…someone just handed me something. HE RESIGNED TUESDAY???? February, will you never stop?!?!
At Least Your Mom Doesn’t Send You Valentine’s Day Care Packages in Your 30’s
I shit you not my mother does this to me. Here’s the hand towel I got this year:
Figure 4: Tangible evidence mother has given up hope I’ll give her grandchildren.
While I’m somewhat certain this is for taunting purposes, I’m completely sure it’s because she has no faith that a dude would be willing to purchase a pink thing vomited on by hearts for the purposes of a fabricated holiday. It’s like when she said I wasn’t going to graduate high school because I was late all the time and those tardies turned into absences and those absences started chipping away at my grade and I was in danger of flunking English.
But my clever self decided to leverage the fact that I worked at a coffee shop before first period. See it wasn’t really my fault I was late – I was late because I was a go-getter (and needed money for weed Bibles).
So as a solution to my plight I brought zee teacher lattes on the mornings I was late and somehow those tardies started racking up less frequently. Long story short I passed the course and I will pull the same clever shit on some unwitting fellow who will be just walking along and he’ll be all BAM, look at that chick married to Russell Wilson.
And that chick will be meeeeee.
At Least You Don’t Have a Blog
Congratulations. You have way better things to do with your time than sit around infusing your ideas into the internet. Your life isn’t laid out for the general public to critique and you likely have healthier outlets for your everyday thoughts like talking to people or sports or sex or something. Congraaaaatu-fucking-lations.
OK But For Realskiis…..
I say most things ever in jest, but here’s the real deal. I’ve noticed a recent onslaught of social media lamenting of both the life-effing-sucks and the lonely heart variety. That kinda bums me out and I hate being bummed out, so I offer this to cheer you up.
And so you stop bumming me out.
Solution 1:
Wield Your Inner He-Man/She-Ra
If you don’t get these references it means you’re too young so get off my lawn and read a blog about Justin Bieber.
Figure 5: You can be the boy or the girl, I won’t tell.
For the rest of us, sometimes the best way to get over feeling weak is to be strong for someone else. I was feeling sorry for myself the other day about something stupid because shit, I’m not a robot. Then I got a text from a friend who had waaaay worse news than I did.
While I felt empathy, his/her news affected me in some way and kinda derailed some plans I had. At that moment I had two options of thought patterns:
- “WTF, this bullshit thing happened to me and now THIS? Universe have you no mercy?!”
- “My friend needs me and I need to pull my head out of my ass.”
I went with the latter option and got over myself. Why? Well for starters I’m not the worst. And also because The second we stop taking ourselves so seriously, we can be there for someone else. Having strength for them not only helps he/she who needs it, but you who needed to demonstrate strength to prove to yourself you’ve got this.
And by the way, you totally do and I can prove it. Here in the great labyrinth of adulthood, you’ve been dumped. You’ve failed professionally. You’ve survived that stumble home from accepting too many Fireball shots because that asshole just wouldn’t text you back and perhaps you fell on a random lawn once or twice. But you got up like a champion, every time, and by the way, you didn’t die.
Solution 2:
Do Something You Wish Someone Would Do For You
I have ridiculous daydreams all the damn time. I think it’s comes with the territory of being a writer, but shit, it’s allll the time.
Figure 6: Marriage, perfected.
I’ll imagine random acts of kindness everywhere, like while in line for coffee someone will buy a struggling mother her coffee, or for me waking up to love-inducing music beyond my balcony, or finding flowers on my car, or experiencing a trained toucan flying a note to me tagging that now I’m it and I’m about to play the biggest game of tag with flying birds and my friends.
Right?? It’s getting embarrassing, and now it’s on the internet.
So, how cool would it be if I lived out just one of these daydreams by making it happen for someone else? I guess sometimes I get fearful that my spontaneous do-gooding won’t be reciprocated (from experience, but that’s why you run from the stupids). But I reference my previous point – Get. Over. Self.
The big thing, then, is to not expect something in return. Do cool shit for other people just because you’re that awesome. And yeah, I’m writing this partially to motivate myself because shoo-dang, after your house has been bombed a few times, you get battle fatigue.
But let’s keep going. Let’s do something stupid nice for someone else solely for the purpose of making their day. Kind of like a martyr, only you end up a little less dead.
And also, because WHY NOT.