the grown up's guide to writing

Turn down and/or cancel plans to stay in and write. Sunk cost fallacy biohacked. Sexy hermit speed boost unlocked.

Fill your Brita to fuel the long hours scribbling away by candlelight ahead of you.

Tell your friends, loved ones, and LinkedIn professional connects that you have shut yourself in to write. They need to brace for the big swings ahead.

Do your dishes.

Do your cleaning.

Refill your Brita.

Slip into something a little more writerly. A long cardigan with nothing under it, perhaps. Nope, that is just a narrow window into the no man’s land between your hips and or tits and then boom, no warning, genitals. An oversized button down. Okay, but is that, like, really what’s comfortable and sexy? Or is that, just, like. Did i see that in the background image of a justgirlythings post? Back in the day? NO it wasn’t justgirlythings, it was Mila Kunis in friends with benefits. No, natalie portman in friends with benefits. wait . if mila and natalie were both in borderline identical movies about friends with benefits airing at the same time then the transitive property of black swan means that one of said movies is the darksided mirror of the other; OMG, is friends with benefits no strings attached’s tether? I feel for jordan peele in that he creates brilliant insightful concepts and shares them with people who immediately bastardize them into all purpose words for anything, like “jawn” or “gaslight.” 2022 word of the year. Sweet god. And we didn’t do that. Gen z didn’t do that. Everyone wants to pin all the snowflakery on us, but we’ve been in these streets chopping it up about school shooter drills and the moral ambiguity of our desires to procreate in the face of climate change since before millennials got wise about hi-lo skirts. This gaslight shit is all them. “Gaslit” you. Bro there is already a word for LYING. There is already a word for TRYING TO CONVINCE YOU SOMETHING THAT ISN’T TRUE. bro if you are feeling “gaslit” because someone tried to tell you a lie one time and you believed it that is on YOUR reading comprehension skills. If you believed something because one person said it to you one time, something that took the OG gaslight victim NOXIOUS POISONS and CAPTIVITY to believe, that is on you and your lack of a grit mindset. Bro i got this sweater in williamsburg on the street when my friends and i were walking around and i see this gorgeous blue sweater hanging up and i express interest and the woman selling shit gets so excited and goes OH! It’s a PRICELESS sweater, an heirloom, made many years ago; totally one of a kind. There’s nothing like it. Fifteen dollars. And i say sick, that’s totally an heirloom price range, I’ll take it. But the woman really needs me to grasp how momentous a trade we’re engaging in, of this priceless heirloom never been seen before one of a kind farm to table non-GMO pre-industrial ethical-diamond single-sheep sweater. So i say thank you for my heirloom and she says you’re REALLY going to love it nobody else has anything like it, have you ever seen this color blue anywhere else (which reminds me of the time a dude trying to date me asked “does anyone understand you like i do?” unfortunately forcing me to just start listing names) and i say no i haven’t that’s why i traded my fifteen dollars in united states currency to you for it! Thank you have such a lovely day, so excited about my heirloom sweater. And i walk on and see that the sweater, obviously, has an h&m tag on it. Did this woman GASLIGHT ME? NO. she LIED TO ME. because sometimes, as people, we LIE TO EACH OTHER. Not me tho i literally cannot at all it doesn’t sit right with my honorable constitution but y’all be easy knowing your names stand for nothing. What was i saying tho? Oh, writing. Oh my god, fuck, i’m supposed to be writing. Ok ok yes no absolutely totally no back to the writing.

Refill the Brita.

Turn on Vanderpump Rules because you do better parallel playing. Hearing these people drinking double vodka crans at fast casual vegan breakfast restaurants and then going out to the strip mall parking lots of those fast casual vegan breakfast restaurants to fistfight will cultivate the collectively focused, highly accountable zen coffeehouse atmosphere you need.

Start thinking about how even though the Vanderpump Rules cast are awful people, they’ve brought you so much joy and solace these past few hard years when you’ve really needed moments of light, and are, when it really comes down to it, all god’s children. Tear up a little.

Mop.

Refill the Brita.

Take the enneagram test.

Take it again, but really mean it this time.

Take it again, but think about what if we include those years that you were different from how you are now.

Take it again, but what if you’ve been opportunistically lying to yourself and your entire memory of your childhood was wrong and that awful thing your mom said to you about you was right. What then

Take it but if that tattoo was like a centimeter and a half to the left like you originally wanted it and it’s like fine now like no it’s definitely grown on me, yeah, thanks for saying you like where it is, yeah no, I’m definitely super happy with it I just wanted you to know it wasn’t my original vision so my permanent, elective, always-visible body modification doesn’t represent or say anything about me or my aesthetic taste at all. Just wanted to make that clear. Yeah, my sleeve is really filling up! It’s like that Fugitive Songs lyric, “every day it’s getting harder finding room for more regret.” Like that. Do you have any? No? Oh my god you HAVE to get one, I swear to god it doesn’t even hurt that much and they’re sooooo addictive and you really don’t even notice them except for how much you LOVE THEM

Take it but what if you hadn’t seen that awful thing at six flags that you and your middle school bus buddy never told anyone about

Take it but what if you believed your therapist and loved ones

Take it but like just thinking about your values so it reflects the real you and isn’t muddled by your abilities, tendencies, characteristics, personality, or behaviors.

Send screenshots of the most damningly relatable sentences from the outcome to your oldest friend. This will be novel and captivating information for them, since they’re completely unfamiliar with your neuroses and never grow weary of your ruminations.

Decide to give up on the whole writing thing because the interweaving-of-highbrow-theory-and-lowbrow-feminine-culture-through-personality-and-humor thing is played out by players far better than you. Shake your fist at Rayne Fisher Quann.

Refill the- oh, it’s full. Look at you! A hot young professional with a roof over your head and a full Brita, in the big city!

Chug your water.

Get a stomachache from chugging your water. Remember your youth when you could chug POISON and not get a stomachache? Is it getting about time for you to settle down? Your body is clearly throwing in the towel. Your Brita is full, so you’re about ready to run a household. Last time you saw a baby at the flea market you started crying. Your mom would be thrilled.

Refill the brita.

Think about the hotties you will score at the next perfectly amber lowlit dinner party you go to, of which you, 22 and a strong candidate for voluntary scurvy, have been to myriad, where you, in your turtleneck and blazer that is not so correctly fitting that people assume you work in an OFFICE office doing, like, Enron, but is tailored enough that people get the vibe that you can get to places without using maps, are leaning against the prewar molding on a doorway and bashfully telling a woman how you write a successful substack.

Get pulled out of the fantasy by wondering what a successful substack is.

Unable to glean any idea of what accomplishment in your field would look like, go back to the fantasy, but imagine the woman being significantly meaner to you. That does it.

Hit the showers (refill the brita).

With the radical acceptance fresh in your mind that girls will only like you if you write something, get back to your careful practice of your sacred craft.

Come up with nothing, so

Sit on your back on your floor with your legs straight up against the wall like tv characters do when they’re Thinking At Home.

Picture yourself doing this.

Conclude, hey, if we look at this objectively, a sexy strapping young lass has shenaniganed around her apartment for a day doing quirky activities like refilling the brita and sitting weird. That’s MOST of new girl. In your recall, the memory of this day can be like the montage of jess when she’s home alone bored. Quirky but definitively propulsive music is playing, to show that time is passing, over images of you—there’s you refilling the Brita, there’s you sitting weird. What a day! We all had fun!

Realize you’ve just concluded that picturing yourself being alluringly charming, completely stripped of the psychological and affective dimensions of your experience of the day, is productive enough for you. Look at the sky and shake your first at john berger. HE CAN’T KEEP GETTING AWAY WITH IT!

Conclude that making memes with yourself about theorist john berger means your inner life is plenty complex and rich, thank you very much, and you have nothing to prove to anyone by sharing it.

Get super fucking high and realize that in vanderpump rules they never not once show anyone refilling a Brita. and god knows they need the hydration. Pour out your brita in the amazon box you haven’t taken out yet and ship it to valley village.

Refill the brita.