Fun-Sized Advice

On fun-sized advice

I’m empty. What do I fill myself with?
First, hope. Then some strength. After that, motivation. Then finally, purpose.

How do you fake being secure? I don’t have any idea on how to even fake not despising myself.
The trick isn’t to fake being secure. The trick is to embrace your insecurity. Part of that process is forgiving yourself and just letting it all be okay. (It’s not easy to do, but it’s a much better use of your energy than faking anything.)

Why does it bother me so much when he follows his apologies with “I didn’t intend to hurt you”?
Because he’s trying to excuse himself by invalidating your pain or he’s confessing that you were never supposed to find out in the first place. Either way, fuck his intentions. They don’t mean shit.

Does Walter White have narcissistic personality disorder?
More like antisocial personality disorder. (And how are you just now watching Breaking Bad?)

Lately when I’m almost asleep, I wake up suddenly, filled with shock and horror that I really, actually have to die someday.
Yeah. That’s a thing that happens. Terrifying, isn’t it?

I just had my heart broken for the first time and holy shit. I literally have chest pain. These chemicals surging through my body are the worst. What the fuck. Ow ow owwww make it stop.
Feel that shit. Feel it all the way deep down. Feel it hard. That exquisite pain is one of the most raw and uniquely human emotions you can experience, and someday it will be useful to you.

Why do our moms hate Hillary so much?
They’d never admit it, but the real reason is internalized misogyny.

Which is worse: being the dumbest person in the room, or the smartest person in the room?
Depends on the room.

Until you have the ‘let’s be exclusive’ talk, all’s fair in the dating wars, right?
Wrong. All is not fair, so it’s best you follow the golden rule: Do unto those you are dating as you would have them do unto you.

He’s never heard of Nick Cave. This is a dealbreaker, right? I mean, come on.
That’s not a dealbreaker. That’s an opportunity. (Don’t be a snob.)

What kind of drinks would you personally order at a dive bar and what would you order at a more upscale place?
Whiskey.

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64 thoughts on “On fun-sized advice

    • Livvid says:

      I take that back. Incompatible music snobbery is the true deal breaker. Talk your shit… about *other* people’s taste in music. *Together*

      • hm says:

        My partner and I are essentially musically incompatible. I vaguely listen to folk punk, gangster rap and some other garbage and he’s a musician balls deep in a legitimately eclectic collection. He’s improved my taste somewhat (or at least made me a more tolerable DJ at parties,) but I mostly have no use for music. I listen, mostly unmoved, for solely aesthetic purposes. I don’t listen to music while walking, while alone more than bimonthly. It’s been argued that I’m a robot. He experiences synesthesia. Mother fucker sees colors and shit.

        I read like he listens to music. We talk about other stuff. I like to tell him music is frivolous. It’s great. We’ve driven cross country together (three times,) and
        never repeated an album. I ask him why I enjoy certain aspects of music and he usually can explain it.

        • LIVVID says:

          That’s awesome.

          I don’t know why it’s so important to me that someone I date have the emotional connection I have to music. It doesn’t even have to be the same genre. It’s not like I’m shooing someone away on the third date because I find out they’re not super into music, but it really dampens my attraction.

          • hm says:

            I think it’s the mirrored passion that makes it work. That we can both understand eachother’s intensity about our respective art forms (and still poke fun at ourselves and each other,) helps.

            Variety is the spice of life, man.

          • hm says:

            Plus: it’s really fun to watch the person you love enjoy something they love even if it means nothing to you. For this reason, I’ll ask him about rhythm, tone and drum fills or use the word raw to trigger one of his impassioned responses.

            I talk about books in the same way. We use our understanding of our own passion to understand eachothers.

            It dope.

      • Veryon says:

        BBad, Saul and HoC are the most interesting genre shift for our generation. All of them are “fall of man” stories. I think it’s a sign that we’re moving beyond simple single failures in character illustrated by Archie Bunker, et al.

  1. axiothea says:

    I grew up in a tiny country with no TV and parents who were into Tchaikovsky etc, so I’m still catching up on all the music that happened after 1950 (I’m 28).

    This particular type of ignorance is a great filter for jerks though.

  2. N says:

    Can’t I despise that there is this perception that Hillary represents women as a whole instead of being an example of a woman? What if I disagree with her politics?

    • Sat says:

      I live in a country with a woman President (Michelle Bachelet from Chile) and I do think it’s important for her to represent Chilean women because politics benefit from the perspective of women. I think it’s difficult to think of any candidate as the example of one woman when there aren’t other woman candidates to compare her to. Last election we had two women fighting for the majority of the votes and they came from both ends of the spectrum, which made it easier to see them as two examples of Chilean women and how our interests are still varied and depend on our place in the political spectrum. But you need more than one for that.

  3. Lotcal says:

    “I didn’t mean to hurt you” is the relationship equivalent of sorry not sorry and all those “I’m sorry if I offended anyone” bullshit apologies from public figures after they have said something sexist/racist/homophobic/generally ignorant.

    • The Coquette says:

      Bourbon. Anything above the well will do. If I’m in a place that prides itself on its collection, I’ll let them pick one for me.

      • S says:

        If you can get your hands on it, Lark Distillery’s single malt is bloody delicious (am an Aussie and therefore somewhat biased, but it’s still really good).

        • m11e says:

          Well whiskey is the cheapest. It’s never a good brand. It just comes in a big cheap bottle. It’s best used mixed in cocktails or with juice. Above the well would be a name brand whiskey, something that tastes good by itself.

        • J Lynn says:

          The well is that area below the bar, by the ice, glasses and soda wand. “Top shelf” booze, the better liquor, is the stuff on display behind the bartender.

  4. Sat says:

    I can believe “I didn’t mean to hurt you” once or twice, but I’ll lose my shit when they then say “I promise I won’t hurt you again” because it’s a promise that they fucking will.

    • Gaybeard says:

      “I’ll never hurt you again” Whoa. That’s not a healthy thing to say and an impossible standard to set for yourself.

  5. unicornsrpeople2 says:

    For the person who’s heart was broken for the first time: on the upside, you’ll now learn to appreciate sad love songs (and probably art in general) on a whole new level.

    It’s weird for me to look back on it, but listening to sad music while crying my eyes out when my college boyfriend broke my heart for the first time, and now it’s kind of a sweet memory. The bitterness has faded enough, and I can now treasure all the big feelings and personal growth that came out of that experience. You will too. And it’s been a few years, but it really didn’t take as long to get over it as you probably think it will right now.

  6. D says:

    “That exquisite pain is one of the most raw and uniquely human emotions you can experience, and someday it will be useful to you.”

    How?

    • Livvid says:

      It’s transformative. You’re never the same person after coming out of pain like that. Everything looks different, new. At first it’s jarring but after a while it becomes exciting.

      It makes you so sensitive. You listen to music, watch movies and talk to people at a higher level of empathy.

      So much of who I am I owe to my heartbreaks. I was exposed, wide open and tender, and in that vulnerability, I allowed the world to make an imprint on me.

      • WhoAmI says:

        Didn’t do that to me. Then again, I was pretty sensitive and empathetic to begin with. It made me realize how easily I could be toyed with by a guy I loved, tho.

      • daisy says:

        Very well said.

        I also think when you avoid that vulnerability – when you try to erase that hurt prematurely – you run the risk of becoming bitter, defensive, and less empathetic.

  7. P says:

    Whenever I’m tempted to be a snob about things that people haven’t heard of, I remember to be excited about all the excellent stuff in the world that I haven’t got to yet.
    (one of Nick Cave’s twin sons died from misadventure on a cliff and some acid in my city recently. good time to get into him since he probably won’t be releasing anything new for a while.)

  8. WhoAmI says:

    Never heard of Nick Cave. Now that I’m reading about him and stuff, he looks like he is on the boring side of post-punk. It sounds more like OP’s loss for listening to him than mine for not even knowing who he is.

    • WilhelminaMildew says:

      I love what he did with The Birthday Party, they were a spectacularly one of a kind jazz punk musical train wreck and were fabulous. I like some of his very early solo work, but his later stuff isn’t nearly as raw or visceral.

    • Rainbowpony says:

      Ha! I’ve always avoided musical snobbery because I think it is correlated with a lack of creativity.

      I could be wrong tho.

    • GOAT says:

      I don’t know. Procrastination is like a state of mind. You don’t “defeat” it. I think you’d need to go deeper. This seems awfully generic.

  9. Kevin says:

    Internalized misogyny is probably painfully and totally right. My mom is a highly educated, moderate Republican, and she says some truly awful things about Hillary. She can be pretty hard on any politician, but this election cycle has brought up 20 years of antipathy for Hillary and made it spiky. I wonder if most women in her demo gilded their opinion of Hillary during the 90s, and neither hell nor high water will turn them back around.

    • J Lynn says:

      I definitely think it’s the successful 25 year anti-Hillary propaganda campaign, which is mostly misogyny. There’s one other reason for the hate: success. After Republicans easily obliterated every liberal from McGovern to Dukakis, the conservative movement cannot … Fucking … Stand … The Clintons for being successful at politics. St. Ronny Reagan was supposed to have permanently secured eternal holy dominance for the party. They feel they are legitimate and Democrats are not (c.f. Obama). The Clintons were canny and played the game, triangulating in response to public opinion — unlike the other liberals that movement conservatives regarded (correctly, in a sense) as weak, idealistic pushovers. Simply winning made them detestable to ideology based movement conservatives. But more of the hate has stuck to Hillary than Bill today. Why? Simply because women are easier targets.

      But my mom likes Hillary a lot, same as all her friends, except one that’s gone rogue for Trump. Mom is generally apolitical, too, not a partisan Democrat by any means. This bunch are mostly lower middle class white women from the rural Upper Midwest.

  10. GOAT says:

    I was lucky enough to start playing several instruments from a very young age which might have something to do with my musical snobbiness. But I love being shown new stuff and love showing people stuff if they’re open to it. That openness matters more than being perfectly in sync IMO and it’s actually quite hard to find.

    It’s gross when the songs someone likes are just iterations of one another, though. They don’t realize they’re basically listening to the same song over and over. Add some variety! Add some art!

  11. Jomi says:

    The “I didn’t intend to hurt you” one sent me on a deep introspection trip. It’s one of my goto phrases when I fuck up. I always thought it was a sincere way of apologizing, as in “I’m sorry I hurt your feelings, if it makes you feel any better, I really didn’t mean to”.

    The more I think about it, the more it sounds like a very very shitty way to say I’m sorry.

    Yeah, damn… Anyone else?

  12. Payal says:

    Just experienced the “dating wars” thing firsthand. Everyone was telling me I should still be dating other people, give my ex another chance, etc., but I didn’t because I knew how hurt I would be if the guy I was currently dating did that. So I applied the Golden Rule, stumbled across this post weeks later, and just now realized I probably learned it from you. So first of all, thanks.

    The issue I see with it, though, is it can set the expectation that the other person will also do unto me as they would have me do unto them. Which he didn’t, probably because he’s some flavor of hypocrite or general asshole, and now I’m regretting that I put all my eggs in one basket, so to speak. I get that I can’t control his behavior, and I shouldn’t allow my actions to be defined by how he acted either, but shit…I feel taken advantage of.

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