Hey there adoring fans (Katie Hoffman)!

It’s been two weeks since my last post: Day 227: R.I.P Tv and life has been great!  I’ve lost 10lbs!  The world is my oyster!  Yesterday, it rained one-hundred dollar bills!  Ok, ok.  You caught me.  I did not lose 10lbs, and One-hundred dollar bills did not fall from the sky (although a pigeon did try to kill me, but that’s a story for another day).  I never realized how much I really was addicted to watching Tv.  It’s like crystal meth for soccer moms, or bacon for my  best friend Mary.  Luckily, I have a sponsor that I can call when I’m really itching for a fix who loves Tv maybe even more than I do (which is probably not the best quality in a sponsor…AA would frown upon this…if AA read my blog…which they probably don’t…because I talk about booze so much that you could lick your computer screen right now and it would probably taste like cheap pinot noir…and because AA is an organization and not a real person with eyeballs and the ability to pass judgement on quarter life crisis blogs).  So,  I had a date with my sponsor Craig (one half of the gay duo featured in Day 203: My first Threesome!) last week and he surprised me with a new way to fill my Tv-less time…

Reading!

He picked me up a copy of his new favorite book.

You are a Badass:

How to stop doubting your greatness and start living an awesome life.

by Jen Sincero

This book is great!  Let me rephrase that…. Pages 1 through 87 of this book are great and I’m totally going to read the whole thing!  I only feel mildly judged when reading this book on the train with it’s super huge, self-helpy title on the cover.  The author is right up my ally (she says fuck all of the time) and the first topic discussed in the book talks about the stuff that I wanted to dive into for my next blog post, which is…

Chapter 1: My subconscious made me do it.

As I’ve been trying to, Live as Successful Sarah (as depicted on Day 221: Life on the Upper Yeast Side), I’ve noticed some obstacles that I’ve been having a hard time overcoming. It seems that said obstacles are caused by beliefs that my subconscious has made up based on information I received as a young-in.   Jen, the author (I’m on a first name basis with her because I believe that if I ran into on a subway platform we would probably have quick banter about how fucking slow the trains are on the weekends, and people that have frivolous conversation on subway platforms are allowed to call one another by their first names) suggests an exercise to try to figure out what kinds of hang ups you have going on in your noggin…

“Take a minute to look at some of the less-than-impressive areas of your life and think about the underlying beliefs that could have created them.  Let’s take the old crowd-pleaser, lack of money, for example.  Are you making far less money than you know you’re capable of earning?  Have you reached a certain income level that, no matter what you do you can’t seem to go above?  Does generating an abundance of money consistently seem like something you’re not even physically capable of?  If so, write down the first five things that come to your mind when you think about money.  Is your list full of hope and bravado or fear and loathing?  What are your parents’ beliefs about money?  What are the beliefs of the other people you grew up around?  What was their relationship with money?  Do you see any connection between their money and yours?”

My list:

1.  I will never-ever have enough money.

2.  People are disappointed with others that have less money because people with less money are not smart enough to receive and take care of an abundance of money.

3.  If I ever receive an abundance of money I should spend and enjoy it right away before it’s gone.

4.  I do not do anything worthy enough to make more than enough money.

5.  Money ruins Christmas.

Damn! I have and always have had a horrible relationship with money.  Why?  My parents had a horrible relationship with money.  And at least some of their parents did too…and then their parents…and then I’m pretty sure my great-great grand parents were cousins so I’m totally fucked.  As a kid the only things I knew about money were that it didn’t grow on trees, there was never enough to go around, and  people that had money were mean, selfish and thought they were better than everyone else.  And oh yeah, it ruined Christmas.  I remember my Dad telling me not to ask for a lot of things for Christmas because we couldn’t afford it, and I could see the stress in my Mom’s heart when we went Christmas shopping, but inevitably we would get everything we wanted because our parents wanted us to be as fortunate as all of the other kids even if that meant that they never bought gifts for each other, or that we had to eat McDonalds everyday for the next 3 months.  God bless ’em.  And I should add that my parents are amazing.  Despite my few flaws, I’m a lovely well rounded human being with clear-ish skin and strong bones.  And tons of my subconscious fucked-upness comes from society and early experiences as it’s all intertwined in my general up-bringing that begins with my childhood and expands to my teenage years.

Other things I’m subconsciously fucked up about and reasoning that I have justified said fucked-upness with:

Cleaning:

You have to clean because you are messy.  Being messy means you are a terrible person.  Therefore cleaning enforces how terrible of a person you are.  So don’t do it.

Relationships:

If you fall in love with someone they will dump you and it will hurt.  If you don’t fall in love with someone who falls in love with you, you will dump them and it will hurt.  Therefore relationships hurt.

Food:

Eating food makes you fat.  Fat people are terrible people who are frowned upon by society.  Therefore you should always feel bad after eating food.

Naps:

Naps are rewards for working hard.  Therefore if you’ve done any work today (even if that work was flossing) you deserve a nap.  If you can’t fall asleep because you are not tired from flossing, just lay there for 3 hours.  That counts.

Drinking:

The same thing as napping.

Having nice things: 

You can’t afford nice things nor can you take care of them even if you could afford them.  Instead of buying one nice item worth one hundred dollars, buy 7 times worth twenty dollars and throw them on the floor after using them.

Math:

Your brother is good at math.  You didn’t even realize that spending $20 on 7 things is way more than spending $100 on one thing.  Don’t try math, you will fail.

Sense of Direction:

The same thing as Math.

Dogs:

Dogs are awesome and make everything better.  Always have at least one dog but no more than 5 dogs.

So there we go.  A bunch of stuff that I’ve now recognized and need to unlearn.   Doesn’t sound too hard does it?