22 Things People Need To Chill Out About
1) What women should be doing with their vaginas.
2) People who take forever at the ATM. We’ve all been there: you’re waiting for someone behind an ATM and whatever they’re doing is taking FOREVER. You get thisclose to just going up to the machine and pressing all the buttons for them. Surely that must be faster. Why are we so excited to make our bank accounts have LESS money?
3) Whether or not a person likes us back. No need to go around deciphering text messages and body language. If they like you, they like you. There’s nothing you can do to get them to like you any faster. It’s tough because you wish that you could just be an item already, but just go with the flow. Hopefully they’ll come around.
4) Christmas shopping. Christmas is one of the most commercial moments of the year, a time when people drink eggnog and begin thinking MONTHS in advance about what to get their loved ones for this blessed holiday. But it’s all fun and games until somebody ends up on a stretcher.
5) Being against gay marriage.
6) Long lines. There’s almost nothing more annoying than a long line at Duane Reade/CVS/Wal-Mart, especially when there are only two cashiers on the floor and they seem to be doing everything they can to ensure things move at a glacial pace.
7) Organic foods.
8) Hipsters. Can we please allow these people to write blog posts in coffee shops, listen to music on vinyl and use their food stamps to buy salmon from Whole Foods in peace?
9) College admissions/job interviews/graduate school admissions. We pour our heart and souls into applications and we want validation — we need to be told that we are good enough. But we don’t need to let our value as people be decided on whether or not we got into some school or landed some job. For all you scholars out there, there’s this thing called the Academic Wiki which is devoted to unofficial news about how schools move through their hiring process. It’s so easy to get sucked into the vortex of the Academic Wiki and freak out when it says that SKYPE INTERVIEWS have been scheduled for a dream school you applied to and you didn’t get an invite to the Skype party. You’re going to get an interview or not. No use giving yourself an ulcer over it!
10) Monday morning. Yes, it’s Monday morning and the weekend is over and maybe we’re hungover and sleep deprived. But guess what? In just four short days it’s going to be the weekend all over again!
11) Qualifying exams. When you’re in a doctoral program one of the culminating times of your career is the moment you face the doom of your oral exam. For this test of genius you basically have to read like THREE HUNDRED BOOKS and know every idea in them. But there’s no need to freak out about it — your faculty shouldn’t even let you take the exams if you aren’t ready. Plus, you know this stuff. Don’t let some test freak you out.
12) The end of the world/the Mayan calendar. Remember what happened when Y2K hit? NOTHING.
13) Lindsay Lohan.
14) Wearing the same pants several days in a row.
15) Why a person has yet to text you back. Worrying about it will not summon their response, though waiting on texts is admittedly the most annoying feature of the 21st century.
16) Going on ridiculous diets. The Atkins diet. Juice cleanses. The Cookie Diet. The Air Diet, where you hold food up to your mouth and only pretend to eat it. Mess. Everyone should be at a weight they are comfortable with, whatever that is. We do not need to be brainwashed with societal notions of size and the weight guilt industrial complex!
17) Bad hair days.
18) Bad outfit days.
19) Forgetting a person’s name. Maybe you met them once and had a great conversation but you don’t remember their name for the life of you. Whatever. Hopefully you’re with somebody else and can introduce your friend, “This is my friend Jack” so that the unknown person will reveal themselves to you. Otherwise, just ask them their name.
20) What other people think about you/whether your work/ideas are good enough. Just do you and the right people will come around.
21) Being wrong. It’s perfectly OK to be wrong — to fail a test, to get a dreadful C on a paper, to go in for a kiss only to find out the person just wants to be friends.
22) Being bad in bed. Good sex happens when you and the person you are sharing sexual congress enjoy a natural flow. You easily move into and with each others bodies without giving it any thought. Don’t worry about being bad in bed because worrying about it might actually make you stiff, which is not that fun to sleep with!