Do Whatever The Fuck You Want

Twelve Habits of Happy, Healthy People Who Don’t Give a Shit About Your Inner Peace

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Every damn time someone in my facebook feed posts something like this, I click it. Every damn time.

We all have this facebook friend, right? People you genuinely love and admire. People you like hanging out with. People you invite to your birthday parties. You know. Actual friends. Until you’ve clicked links exactly like this again and again and again. For YEARS. And all of a sudden, you start to wonder if this is some elaborate hoax, if you’ve actually just been reading the same article over and over.

It’s not like I have anything against happiness, or success, or meditation, or yoga, or being nice, or smiling more, or eating healthy, or losing weight, or being your best you, or embracing the day with a positive attitude. Those all sound great. Honestly, they do. And there are some really smart, simple truths to be found in all of those articles. There truly are.

It’s just that I have a problem with being told to do all of those things by skinny blonde ladies laughing on a beach wearing yoga pants.

Don’t believe me? Take the challenge. Next time you read one of these articles, I dare you not to play Inspirational Photo Bingo:

Don’t believe me? Compiling these photos took LESS THAN FOUR MINUTES.

I can’t fucking remember the last time I pranced around a tropical island paradise waving a white scarf around my head as a professional photographer snapped a picture, but I bet if I did, I’d be a whole lot happier too.

Below please find my version of this article, that I want to share with you, the internet. May it bring you all the inner peace you can cram into your backpacking gear right before downward dogging it atop that mountain at sunrise.

1. Do whatever the fuck you want.
2. Do whatever the fuck you want.
3. Seriously, do you want that burger? Then just fucking eat a burger. Don’t be gross about it, and don’t eat a burger three meals a day. But I beg you, women and image-conscious male humans of the world, stop beating yourself up about it and just eat the fucking burger.
4. Do whatever the fuck you want.
5. Have good friends. Call them. Complain a little. That’s what friends are for. Return the favor. Don’t be a shitty friend.
6. Learn how to laugh about farts. Fart more. Laugh about it.
7. Be incessantly curious about the world around you! Experience art, science, beauty, and nature! But stop beating yourself up on those nights when you just want to sit your ass on the couch and watch reruns of Friends. 
8. Smile when you feel like smiling. Laugh whenever you fucking feel like laughing. Pro tip: Being told to ‘laugh more’ is not going to make you laugh more. Being told to ‘smile more’ is not going to make you smile more.
9. Make time for yourself. After you’ve run that 5K, started a load of laundry, harvested your organic vegetable garden, run to the bank, paid the bills, dazzled everyone with recipes that are cost-effective, healthy, and delicious, thought of something witty and clever to share with your social networking site, caught up on current events and politics, and cleaned all of the house, that special hour set aside just for you is so critical to your well-being.*
   10. Do whatever the fuck you want.
   11. Don’t care what other people think. Unless they’re right. In which case, fucking humble yourself enough to listen to them.
   12. Do. Whatever. The Fuck. You Want.

Do what you want. Be your damn self. Don’t be a terrible person. Be nice to others. Be supportive of your friends and allow yourself to give them the benefit of the doubt when they want to try something new, like rescuing shelter dogs, or making performance art in the nude, or dating terrible people. They’re your friends and you love them, and if they suck, stop being their friend. Show up for work. Pay your bills. Find some fucking purpose in your life, and figure out a way to share that purpose with others in a way that isn’t sanctimonious and doesn’t involve a picture of a woman laughing at an empty beach. Smile because something makes you smile. Laugh because you’ve surrounded yourself by people who make you laugh, and they’re funny fucking people, and you’re happy to be with them. Dance because you’re drunk at a big dance party with your friends and Michael Jackson is playing, not because ‘no one is watching.’ Everyone is watching. We’re at a fucking party. That’s how parties work.

Do whatever the fuck you want.

And the next time one of you has the kind of spare cash around to take a prancercise vacation to a tropical island, for the love of all that is holy please bring me with you. I am excellent at waving scarves around but even better at buying drinks with tiny umbrellas.

*And I don’t even HAVE KIDS! Or a husband! Or a boyfriend! I can’t even imagine how condescending that advice must feel to working moms. As someone who works all the time and can barely remember which day of the week the trash gets taken out: making time for yourself seems like one of the cruelest bits of advice of all. I’ll make plenty of time for myself. ONCE I FINISH ALL OF THE THINGS.

September Awesome

• When little kids clearly dressed themselves and look hilarious (To be fair, little kids are hilarious all the time)
• When you get the milk-to-cereal just right (although drinking that sweet milk at the bottom is perfection also)
• Finding out your birthday is on a Friday or Saturday next year (When I was at United, our birthdays were considered a holiday....so you could either have double pay or the day off; either one was pretty fabulous)
• The feeling of scrunching sand in your feet (Two words:  Seaside, FL)
• Finding a mix tape given to you by an old boyfriend (This kind of makes me sad because no one has ever given me a mix tape)
• The Five-Second Rule (used only for about a week after the cleaning ladies have been here.  After that, it gets a little dicey)
• Successfully multitasking while on the phone (Now that I'm at Cerner, I've become brilliant at using the speaker phone.  Folding laundry, putting on makeup, unpacking; etc. - all while taking a conference call)
• Taking your bra off after wearing it for hours (A man will never know this freedom)
• Getting in a line just before it gets long (Doesn't matter where it is.  After standing in line and then turning to look to see bazillions of people behind you, it's so nice to think "At least I'm ahead of all you suckers!")
• The smell and sound of a campfire (This is only a valid awesome when in the actual vicinity of a campfire.  Afterwards, when the smell is in your clothes - no bueno!)
• The Parking Lot Pull Through (So much easier than having to back out of the space!)
• Laugh lines on people's faces (All of my lines on my face are either from smiling too much or laughing too much....both of which I'm proud to have)
• Seeing a helium balloon way up in the sky somewhere (I beg to differ!  This is possibly one of the saddest sights ever.  I think it stems from how much trouble I got in when Charlie lost his balloon and I got blamed for it)
• When someone lands on the hotel you just built in Monopoly (To be fair, I get excited when someone lands on property.  Any time you're playing with Rich, you don't usually get to the point of having hotels.  He's very competitive at Monopoly)
• A good floss after a tough steak (This is 100% true but I am a fiend when it comes to flossing.  Love that feeling!)
• Paying for something with exact change (I rarely use cash but yes, I can see the validity of this)
• High fiving babies (or any other face to face time with babies, in my opinion!)
• Talking about how much the meal you're eating at home would cost at a restaurant (I'm fairly certain no restaurant would serve the same food I serve at home but it does feel good when you figure out the cost per person of said meal)
• Finding food in nature and eating it (I more prefer finding food at Panera and eating it but whatever)
• Peeing in a lake (keeps the fish away, that's for sure)
• The sound of a solid crack from a good break in billiards (I don't really shoot pool but I'll take your word for it)
• Bowling celebrations (Cuz a strike isn't nearly as fun unless you can cheer for yourself and make everyone give you high fives!)
• Pulling a weed and getting all the roots with it (This is probably my favorite on this list.  I used to tell my mom that I would do the weeding at the lake for this reason alone)
• When the only other person going up in the elevator is going to the same floor as you (Better than this is having no one in the elevator with you)
• Taking a deep breath of fresh air in the middle of nowhere (or on a slope all by yourself with fresh powder at Beaver Creek)