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31 articles · page 1 of 2
How to Have a Bad Day Step 1: Dwell on the Past
Step one: start the morning with a full highlight reel of every mistake you have ever made. Bonus points for that awkward thing you said in 2012.
How to Have a Bad Day Step 2: Worry About the Future
Step two: nothing says inner peace like rehearsing disasters that have not happened yet. Add a few apocalyptic extras, just in case.
How to Have a Bad Day Step 3: Compare. Everything.
Step three: compare your blooper reel to everybody else's highlight reel. Their toddler reads Latin. Yours flushed a banana down the toilet. Twice.
How to Have a Bad Day Step 4: Follow Your Heart
Step four: follow your heart, where feelings are facts, truth is optional, and consequences are Future You's problem.
How to Have a Bad Day Step 5: Stay Busy
Step five: stay busy. Not productive, not purposeful, just gloriously booked. This one was a big ouch for me.
How to Have a Bad Day Step 6: Listen to Everyone's Opinions
Step six: open every app and let the opinions pour in. Especially from the prophet charging ninety-seven dollars for a word.
How to Have a Bad Day Step 7: Assume Rejection
Step seven: assume rejection. Silence means they hate you. A thumbs-up emoji means you are dead to them. Never consider that they were just in Costco.
How to Have a Bad Day Step 8: Pretend You're Fine
Step eight: say “I'm fine.” You have said “just tired” eighty-seven times this week and it is only Wednesday. A gentle look at the mask most of us wear.
How to Have a Bad Day Step 9: Complain
Step nine: complain. It feels good for a moment, and it quietly rewires your brain to find more things wrong. Israel tried this for forty years.
How to Have a Bad Day Step 10: Gossip
Step ten: gossip. The only person this post is aimed at is me. It was hard to write, and it did not come together until I repented of a few things.
How to Have a Bad Day Step 11: Never Be Content
Step eleven: never be content. Happiness is always one season away — after graduation, after marriage, after the kids sleep. It keeps ghosting you.
How to Have a Bad Day Step 12: Don't Rest
Step twelve: do not rest. We have been trained to believe rest must be earned, so we schedule it for roughly never.
How to Have a Bad Day Step 13: Isolate Yourself
Step thirteen: isolate yourself. Decline every invitation with “maybe next time,” ghost the group chat, and call the whole thing self-care.
How to Have a Bad Day Step 14: Procrastinate
Step fourteen: procrastinate. Make a to-do list, spend forty-five minutes making it pretty, then alphabetise the spice rack instead.
How to Have a Bad Day Step 15: Hold on to Stuff
Step fifteen: hold on to stuff. I walked through my cluttered house this morning thinking I needed more room for my things. That is not the answer.
How to Have a Bad Day Step 16: Be Defensive
Step sixteen: be defensive. Spend an evening reasoning with someone whose primary source was a guy on YouTube, and arrive home spiritually irritated.
How to Have a Bad Day Step 17: Stay Bitter
Step seventeen: stay bitter. It never knocks and introduces itself. It just moves in quietly and starts answering for you in a sarcastic tone.
How to Have a Bad Day Step 18: Resent Aging Pt. 1
Step eighteen: resent aging. Birthdays hit differently now, and nobody prepares you for what midlife actually asks of a body. Part one.
How to Have a Bad Day Step 19: Resent Aging Pt. 2
Step eighteen continued: marriage in midlife is one person under three blankets while the other stands in front of an open freezer. Part two.
How to Have a Bad Day Step 20: Live Like There's No Tomorrow
Step twenty: live like there is no tomorrow. Every decade I have lived through came with its own apocalypse, and here we still are.
How to Have a Bad Day Step 21: Pick a Side and Draw Your Sword
Step twenty-one: pick a side and draw your sword. No nuance, no conversation, no wrestling with truth. Just divide, dismiss, and unfriend.
How to Have a Bad Day Step 22: Spiral
Step twenty-two: spiral. One correction at work and by two in the afternoon you are browsing job listings and pricing out a whole new life.
How to Have a Bad Day Step 23: Rescue People
Step twenty-three: rescue people. Jump in after them, skip the life jacket, and quietly enjoy how necessary it makes you feel.
How to Have a Bad Day Step 24: Follow Other's Convictions
Step twenty-four: adopt everyone else's convictions. Borrowed rules never stick, and when they fall off, the shame arrives right on schedule.