the Tommy|Zor era

It’s so painfully obvious that summer is officially over. For instance, I accidentally left the ice cube tray out, and nothing happened.* I can say without hesitation that this was the worst summer of my entire life, with any other shitty summer running a distant second place.

With that wonderful positivity flowing from my keying fingers, I wanted to share some things with you that will sound both preachy and pathetic. Let’s consider this entry a “blog post” or a diary entry from Doogie Howser’s awesome computer program. Yes, kids, I am a broken man these days.

*May or may not be true

Love & Relationships

If you’re in a decent relationship, for the love of god, stay in it. You may be tempted to bail or bolt, but you are so fucking wrong. Every time you think you’re better off alone or with somebody else, you are wrong. (Short of abuse victims, that is, but that’s another story) At some point everyone gets greedy and says “I can do better” or “I deserve more” and, then again, you are wrong. If your relationship made it past 6 months, there’s something special there. Stop running away and try your best. Otherwise, you’ll live to regret it for a long, long time. If I had a nickel for every good woman I pushed away in my life, I’d have five cents and be as miserable as I am now. Word! I knew you were expecting a joke in there, and well, the punchline is my fucking life.

Friendships

As I get older and more insane, I start to realize that beyond friendship lies this underlying understanding that says “Yes, these are your friends. It may not make sense, but they are your friends.” I’ve now gotten past that point, and now I say, “There’s no reason for me to be friends with Person A or B, despite the history.” By having an inappropriate person as your friend, you open yourself up to be hurt and manipulated. Friendship is too blind, I think, and there are times where you realize that you’re being led astray. There’s so much negativity in the world, and if we spend too much time with these people (negatoids), you’re just inviting more misery into your life. There are certain people I’ve run into that can ruin any mood of mine, and can make me feel enraged the same way that a sold-out movie, an hour-early-arrival, brings me.

Careers

There’s a ton of people now in their twenties, either now just going to school or back in school to finish something else. Honestly, good for all of you. I don’t know how you fucking do it! If I were told to go to school for a year starting tomorrow, you’d better believe I’d find a bridge to jump off. Your courage inspires me to be a better person, honestly, and it would inspire me more if I wasn’t already a fucking winner and had no career issues whatsoever.

In today’s tough job climate, you’re bound to be screwed over and over. Hang in there! I bet that you’re in a good position anyway, because there are people off a LOT worse than you. Always take solace in the misery of others, because there’s always somebody lower and more broken.

Self-Esteem

This one’s a toughie. I’d estimate that in general, people are more down about themselves than ever before. Online dating really shows you the real superstars, and in some ways I envy them. I kept running into people that were, for all intents and purposes, unattractive. (your definition may vary, most of the time it’s not even a physical looks issue). However, these fucking people were on Cloud 9, atop their High Horse, on the magic pedestal of joy. I don’t know how they do it. It’s like, “you’re as single as I am, except that you’re a girl and have no reason to be single short of being very picky. With you getting 15-20 emails a day from strangers, and am I not to believe that at least 1-2 of them are decent? So, really, at BARE MINIMUM, 5-10 decents a month? In a city of half a million, you should do fine. In larger cities, seriously, go on there for a week, meet someone, and fuck off. Don’t sit online trying to date 35 men at the same time because that makes you a whore. Speaking of…

Fucking Whores

Who do you think you are, anyway? I’ve run into women that are so unbelievably insecure that they must have 10 men on the go at the same time just to satisfy their attention needs. You know, what? Even that’s fine, if you’re fucking HONEST. They say shit like, “If I wasn’t interested in you, I’d tell you.” Well, no, no you wouldn’t! That’s something I would say, because I have the guts to crush a person or six. You, biotch, do not. Grow up and be honest, do the difficult thing. It’s funny, girls have no problems rejecting you off the bat, but they can string you along for weeks and have all sorts of issues with flaking out slowly. Nice, ladies, nice. I’m sure men do this, too, but I wouldn’t know personally, since to me, men are incredibly easy to figure out: Men want a girl that’s hot, skinny, easy and easy-going. Everything else is some sort of compromise that we work with until something better comes along. Oh, and we all like beer and videogames. And cars and steaks.

Hobbies

It’s important to have hobbies. Although you can’t tell from my writing frequency on this site, I write about 5,000 words a week at least, in book form. It’s my therapy, it’s my version of Dr. House solving medical mysteries. If you don’t have a quality hobby, you should get one. My advice is to avoid anything that involves other people, like sports or clubs. You need to do something alone, something that brings you closer to inner peace. When you get comfortable being alone and being productive, you will excel at dealing with other people. At that point, you might actually figure out what you’re interested in, and it might help you make some career or educational choices. Honestly, if I would’ve spent more time doing my hobbies as a kid, I would be in a different field now altogether, probably much happier in my life. Hopefully some of you get a chance to experience that, and not realize that you hate your careers a couple years shy of 30.

Then again, my dream jobs of being a porn star and/or mattress tester are a little farfetched, even for me.