Hyperbole and a Half

But that’s exactly what happened. After thirty-five days, I decided to just never go back to Blockbuster again.

Most people can motivate themselves to do things simply by knowing that those things need to be done. But not me. For me, motivation is this horrible, scary game where I try to make myself do something while I actively avoid doing it. If I win, I have to do something I don’t want to do. If I lose, I’m one step

Fear and shame are the backbone of my self-control.

turns out that being scared of yourself is a somewhat effective motivational technique.

me, motivation is this horrible, scary game where I try to make myself do something while I actively avoid doing it. If I win, I have to do something I don’t want to do. If I lose, I’m one step closer to ruining my entire life.

Thankfully, I have an entire system of lies and tricks in place to prevent me from realizing how shitty I actually am.

I don’t like when I can’t control what reality is doing. Which is unfortunate because reality works independently of the things I want, and I have only a limited number of ways to influence it, none of which are guaranteed to work.

I still want to keep tabs on reality, though. Just in case it tries to do anything sneaky. It makes me feel like I’m contributing. The illusion of control makes the helplessness seem more palatable. And when that illusion is taken away, I panic.

I am incensed that reality has the audacity to do some of the things it does when I CLEARLY don’t want those things to happen.

Reality doesn’t give a shit about my rules, and this upsets me. Not to a great degree. Not even to an obvious degree. But when reality disobeys my rules, detectable levels of surprise, disappointment, and frustration are produced.

At some point in this endlessly spiraling disaster, I am forced to throw all of my energy into trying to be an adult again, just to dig myself out of the pit I’ve fallen into. The problem is that I enter this round of attempted adulthood already burnt out from the last round. I can’t not fail.

But making high-pitched noises won’t solve your problem if your problem is a complete inability to cope with change