Stop apologizing for not being more productive. We are in a global pandemic.

Managing expectations is an incredibly useful professional skill, but especially in 2020, when managing expectations is the difference between setting reasonable goals and living in a perpetual state of panic and/or depression, because you feel like you’re constantly disappointing everyone.

Stop apologizing for not being more productive. We are in a global fucking pandemic.

Everything is on fire. Mondays are made up. Time is a construct created by farmers and abused by philosophers.

People who are still doing their hair and putting on actual pants for Zoom calls in Q4 are the same people who get excited to go to their high school reunions. No shade, I’m just pretty sure there’s a correlation.

If you feel like everyone hates you, you probably need to take a nap.

If you feel like you hate everyone else, you probably need a snack.

What were you hoping to accomplish in 2020? Take that list and cut it in half. Then cut off the bottom three things. There, now you’ve got a more realistic To Do List for The Fall of the Modern World As We Know It.

Just because there’s water in coffee, that doesn’t make you hydrated.

Shame is a useless emotion. Jealousy is a useless emotion. Spite, on the other hand, is emotional rocket fuel.

Stop apologizing for not being more productive. Capitalism is not the meaning of life. Also, we are still in a global motherfucking pandemic.

Any kind of loss deserves to be grieved in its own way, even if it feels silly compared to what others have lost (or other people/things/dreams you’ve personally lost) and you can’t always control what that grieving process feels like, or when it hits you. Listen to your body when it tells you to rest. Be kind to your mind. Grief is necessary, because it’s how we process loss.

Working out is not an aesthetic pursuit, but a functional one. Even if you just flail around, it helps to move stress juice around in your body, so it doesn’t pool in your joints and make you freeze up like the Tin Man.

I can’t imagine dating in a pandemic. But I did date when Axe Body Spray was popular, and those were rough times. So I can almost kind of relate.

Stop apologizing for not being more productive. You’re busy, trying to survive a year-long, global motherfucking pandemic, capped off by an attempted fascist coup, while struggling through the endless manufactured pitfalls of end stage capitalism, for fuck’s sake. Also, let’s not forget about climate change, which is that thing where our home world is slowly killing humanity in self-defense. Go take a nap.

You matter. Your identity matters. Your feelings and experiences and perspective, they matter. What a random stranger on the internet thinks about your book does not matter, in the grand scheme. Log off and have a snack.

Stop comparing yourself or your journey to someone else. Flowers are beautiful, but they look nothing like pizza rolls, which are also beautiful. Someone is going to love you, and your book, for the right reasons.

Happy holidays, everyone!