Over the years I’ve tried keeping track of all the really
good decisions I've made and all the really bad ones. I like to think of it as my own
method of Quality control. I’ve done so pretty stupid things my life, but I’m
the kind of person who doesn’t learn things unless it’s by finding out exactly
what I shouldn’t do by experience. So I’ve bought these bad experiences wholesale and I’m passing the savings on to
you.
Now imagine a night of being incredibly
drunk tired but too keyed up to pass out, and when I did finally managed to
pass out, the hangover that followed was the worst I ever had. Period.
2. Don’t be afraid of being alone: I wasted a year and a half of my life hanging around a group of assholes and dating a guy I didn’t have any feelings for. As absurd as it seems to me now, there was a time in my life that the Idea of being alone on a Friday night absolutely horrified me. It was preferable to spend time with any person that could spare a moment than to deal with perpetual screaming going on in my head. I was utterly miserable. I had to gradually acclimate myself back in to spending time alone. Eventually I began to realize that I was much happier being able to do things on my own terms. I used to put up with a lot of shit from people that I thought were my friends, but in reality they were just people who took advantage of my kindness. I was willing to drop everything for them, but they were never there for me. The sad thing was that I also had many wonderful people in my life that did care about me, but I didn’t get be around them because those poisonous individuals leeched up all my time. It wasn’t until I was able to pull away from everyone that I began to realize who my real friends were. Learning to stand on my own and be comfortable with myself is one of the most important things I’ve learned.
3. Always trust your instincts: Never ignore that feeling down in the pit of your stomach. If someone or something doesn’t feel right it is probably because it isn’t, even if it doesn’t seem logical. Human behavior isn’t always logical. Only you can determine what is necessary and right. There were times when I went along with someone else’s advice and urgings because I thought that they seemed to be the reasonable things to do, even though my heart wasn’t in it. Most of my biggest regrets spawned from this and numerous bad decision subcategories could be filled under this this one. Now, if something doesn’t jive with me with me, it doesn’t happen. If someone starts acting funny or gives me a bad vibe, I drop them like it’s hot. If I really want something I go for it. I wasn’t able to start living that old ‘Live without regrets’ cheese until I started trusting my intuition.
4. Don’t try dating people that are friends with your Ex: Just because your circle of friends has a hard time adhering to the “Bro’s before hoes” rule doesn’t mean that the exception is universal.
5. Stay far away from K-2: If a drug addict tells you, “It’s perfectly legal”, run or punch them in the face. Worst. Trip. Ever. Technically this stuff isn’t even fit for human consumption; there is no way to regulate what kind of chemicals they put in to “potpourri” and everyone’s chemistry reacts differently to it. So basically, it’s like ingesting a small dose of poison just to see what happens. In my case, it affected the memory center of my brain. I smoked my little fake weed joint in the bathroom of crappy hotel outside of New Orleans and within a few minutes I no longer knew where I was. I could not recognize my surroundings at all, I knew that it was familiar to me, but I couldn’t tell you where I was, how I got there, or where I came from. It was like being completely and utterly lost in some new territory and simultaneously having déjà vu. Then about 9 minutes in everything began to flatten out and lose its three-dimensionality, and then the colors started to warp. I remember looking down at my phone and seeing that only 10 minutes had passed and with the last shred of lucidity I had I noted that I still had 30 minutes before the effects wore off. That was when I started freaking out. To make matters worse, there was a domestic assault going down in the hotel room beside of the one we were staying in and the cops were called in. On top of my already panicked state I became convinced that the cops were going to knock down our door and arrest us. At some point I was distracted by my druggie companion who was completely oblivious to all this and watching Bob’s Burgers. The TV screen lulled me into a sense of security and I curled up into a ball and fell asleep. The next morning I woke up with second to worst hang over in my life. The thing that terrifies me more than the actual experience is the idea that people could be out and about, possibly even driving under the influence of this stuff. I’d rather smoke sherm than try that stuff again. Yet, this stuff legal and Marijuana is not, this does not compute.
6. If you don’t know what is, don’t eat it: I believe that all Chinese buffets should come with labels. Some things seem pretty obvious, dimsung , egg drop soup, should look one way, but then there are those mystery items to reside in a kind of gray area. I picked up this doughy round thing covered in sesame seeds from a buffet once because it kind of looked like a cross between a sugar doughnut and baby hedgehog. I was expecting some kind of delicious dessert pastry. I was not expecting it to be filled with this custardy type material that had the consistency of mucus and tasted like nothing.
The same goes with items on a menu that you have no idea what they are. Sometimes you get something amazing and exotic that expands your pallet, other times, you a hot dog that soaked in Canola oil over night and thrown on to a bun. This is actually the one thing I haven’t learned not to do, sticking strange things into my mouth. I’m curious by nature; therefore I have to know things that I don’t know.
The best thing to do is to let me eat the mucus filled baby hedgehog, so you don’t have to.
