So what are your problems? Is your cellphone giving you an echo that annoys the living bajeezus out of you? Is your car’s Bluetooth not connecting to your phone? Did you forget your Netflix password, and you are on the last episode of your favorite show? Are these really problems? Or do we just think we have problems? 

Like traffic, I know more than one person who loses their mind over too much traffic. I have a friend who even joined a ‘traffic group’ that tries to advocate for better use of roads. I asked this friend if he thought maybe he should join a group that supports homeless people or something, anything but traffic, but he said no, traffic is what he is passionate about. I’m serious.

My mission, should I choose to accept it, is to get our house ready for sale. Yes, we are finally selling this beautiful money pit. I have to declutter every surface. There are rumors that we have too many vases and throw pillows…I have no idea how they got there. I mean, okay, I’ll admit it, I may or may not have bought every single piece. But they are sooo pretty…no? 

Besides decluttering, there’s much to do; there have been animals in our attic for probably twenty years. How do I know this? I can hear them moving around from my bedroom. Now, I mentioned this to my dad many years ago, and he didn’t seem moved by it at all. He just looked at me like, well, they haven’t fallen through the ceiling. Okay, but they could. And when they do, what are we supposed to do? Run for our lives?

So I go on Rate My Professor dot com, and lo and behold, some jerk gave me one star out of five. I knew it was someone from that nine o'clock class. If I were a motel, I would not even be a Motel 6; Motel 6 has two stars. It was my only rating on Rate My Professor. So I did the only natural thing I could think of: I rated myself. Oh, stop it, it's not like illegal or anything. And my opinion counts.

Why should I fear death?

If I am, then death is not.

If death is, then I am not.

Why should I fear that which can only exist when I do not?

Epicurus

What do you think happens after death? I know, I know, this is a dark subject to bring up in the morning, as if mornings are not horrific enough. But I can’t help it, I must know. The only reason I'm curious about this is because my dad just died, and I want to know that he’s hanging out in bliss somewhere.

But the truth is that there is no way to know, is there?

I’ve been addicted to a lot of things in my life; I’m not going to sugarcoat it. But none of them were meth, and that is all that really matters. I want to start with the rather casual and benign addictions. I kid you not, I was once addicted to taking selfies. Yep, I’m so embarrassed about it because how vain am I? 

But it was just so fun to play around with the camera and put my face in different lighting and see how I lit up. I think one day I took around a hundred pictures of myself. I know, I know, that’s pretty frightening. I still have the photos on my camera, and I refuse to post them here because, again, the vanity. 

I mean, this new camera selfie thing is like having your own photographer built in. Don’t judge me, I know what you are thinking. Why? That’s such an invasive question. Why does anyone do anything? Yeah, try answering that first.

I think I got an education because I worked in retail once upon a time. I don’t know if you know anything about selling clothing at a store, but let me just give you a clue: it’s barbaric. And when I say that you are in the wild, what I mean by that is, you have to deal with the public. People. We all know people are maddening. And you have to work under crazy sale-obsessed managers who hate life and you.

When I worked at Victoria’s Secret, an Indian man came up to me and told me that he was looking for a bra for his wife. I asked him what size she was. His response was, “About your size.” This is what I’m talking about right here. The longest I lasted at a retail store was a few months. I either quit or got ‘let go,’ obviously because I was overqualified. It was too hard, people!

You have to understand, I was young and some of the only jobs I was qualified to do were in retail, and when I failed miserably at them, I started thinking maybe I’m not good at ‘jobs.’ I began considering my options as a housewife. Seriously, the scars of retail run deep.

So I use a Keurig to make coffee because let’s face it, it’s easy, and I may have mentioned in the past that I am essentially lazy. I don’t know what this grinding coffee beans or using a French press is about. We are not in France, people. This is America, and in America, we drink easy-peasy coffee that takes no effort and tastes very average. 

Well, I ran out of coffee pods to put in the Keurig for my second cup of coffee. What’s a woman to do? Go to Starbucks, that’s what. But I promised myself I would stop spending enough money on coffee that I could use to eventually put a down payment on a house, or so they say. What I really should do is go to the grocery store, but I can’t seem to get myself there. I detest grocery shopping. 

It doesn’t make sense because I love shopping and I love food. There is so much food in grocery stores that have you ever wondered what happens to all that food that goes bad? And how do they even make a profit if they are buying like everything, and people are buying like one-tenth of what they have? I’m not good at math, but it doesn’t add up to me. 

Weight loss is funny, no, actually, I take that back, it’s harder than finding true love. And true love is nearly impossible to find, and is there even really such a thing as true love? It’s kind of like the perfect body; flawless bodies and true love only exist in Hallmark and Bollywood movies.

Losing weight is probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life. What’s really not funny is the fact that it takes an enormous amount of time and effort to lose weight, but you can gain it back in like one-tenth the time tenfold…or so I thought. We’ll get to that in a minute.

I would first just like to say that even when I’m losing weight, I’m constantly thinking about food. I’m not really sure if an hour passes by without me thinking about food. Imagining it, so to speak. Okay, I’m exaggerating, but still, this is the state that I live in. In fact, when I’m on a diet, I’m thinking about food more than when I’m not. What is this madness?

I don’t think I’m alone.

I had an interview for a job that was hosted by an AI bot or whatever you call them. He was definitely smarter than me. I felt like I was talking to a real human, and it was creepy. I didn’t understand why they would hire me when they had this brilliant robot thing. AI is fascinating and scary. It’s not about, will it replace us? But, when will it replace us.

We are not only competing with other people in the job market, but we are also competing with computer intelligence. I don’t know if I’ll make the cut. But it was interesting, I’m on a job site where you post your writing portfolio, every time I submitted an article, the AI would produce a title for the work. My titles were always better than the computer’s. So there.