“At this point in my life, sir,” said Kitchen, “women are a waste of time for me, and I am a waste of time for women.”

-Kurt Vonnegut

You’re single, somewhat. Entangled in a handful of relationships, talking to a handful of girls on-and-off. You wouldn’t really call any of them relationships, though. You scoff at the word relationship. Situationship is much more accurate. Noncommittal, low-stakes, easy little things. You don’t have to try very hard and neither does she. Or her. Or that other one. You never have to shed a tear and you rarely make girls cry. None of this is really that important to you. None of them are really that important to you. Yet still, cutting them all off might kill you.

What are you doing with your life? You’re going to college. Okay, then what? You’ll get a job in your field, right? Let me tell you something, buddy: I work at a restaurant making twelve bucks an hour, and half of my coworkers have college degrees.

I’m not saying your college degree is worthless. I’m not saying the world is falling apart and that hiring managers could give a rat’s ass about a bachelor’s degree. But maybe don’t fool yourself into thinking that you’re going somewhere when you’re making no present effort to get there.

So what are you doing with your life right now? Watching TV, scrolling through Twitter, swiping through the endless abyss of loathing you call a dating app? How sad to be wasting away like this! But that’s not all you’re doing, right?

So there’s this girl. Or some guy. It makes no difference, but there’s this girl and she makes you feel incredible. Your days were dull, dark and boring before she showed up. Now you feel like you mean something, like you might actually know what you’re doing with your life. You give her everything you’ve got — which, let’s be honest, wasn’t a whole lot to begin with — and in return, she makes you feel safe. Comfortable. Content. What a predicament!

I know you may not see it right now, but you’re just as lost as you ever were. Right now you’re stagnating, becoming content with the pathetic little loser you are. Believe me, friend, she won’t be as easy to please as you are. When she leaves, and she will leave, you’ll be all on your own again, no better than you were before. The same scared little boy you always were, just a little more sad than usual. 

You think you know what you’re doing? You think you know where you’re going? What a joke!

What’s the point of this whole life thing anyway? If I’m asking the question, I must have something meaningful to say about it, right? Hah! Like I know any more about it than you! But I’ll tell you this: we’re not just here to fart around. And I’ll tell you this, too: the only reason any of us are here is to fart around until we die!

There are people who have no idea what they’re doing with their lives, and there are others who pretend they do. There are people like me who live in a cascade of upward and downward spirals. There are people with steady levels of happiness, merely existing as the world passes them by. And there are those who take care of themselves. Those who know what’s good for them. Those who make enough right decisions to outweigh the inevitable mountain of bad ones each of us must accumulate.

It’s really not that complicated. One of the simplest things you can do. It’s the most difficult thing too, but just about anybody can do it. I’m talking about getting your life together. Getting a job, getting off your phone. Eating right, not smoking so much. And so on and so forth! You know what you need to do, don’t act like you don’t! You’re the only one with the power to change your life, nobody else is going to do it for you! Stop talking to that poor girl; let her find someone who’s worth her time. She won’t fix you. She won’t complete you. Nobody will. 

One last piece of advice: You can’t lean on other people forever. You’ve got your problems and they’ve got theirs. Sooner or later, everybody you know is going to be too busy with their own horrible lives to deal with yours. And you’ll have no one to rely on but yourself. If you haven’t cultivated that beautiful light inside yourself, you’ll crumble under the weight of a feather. Better get ready, buddy!