Dubious Life Strategies of a Dumbass

Occasionally, people ask me for general advice. When they do, I’m faced with the fact that many life strategies that have been successful for me are procedures I wouldn’t necessarily recommend to anyone. Here are a few.

—Be lazy for long periods of time, and then, in sudden jags, work furiously. You’ll know that the work is important because it roused you from your laziness.

—Become fascinated by a new hobby or lifestyle every two weeks, tell everyone about your new interest, then forget you ever cared about it. Residual information and people will stick to you, making your life rich and complex.

—Save up some money, then move to another country without doing more than a few hours of research about it. If you do research, you might discover that the country doesn’t meet your preferences, which is information you don’t need. Find lodging there by talking to random people on the street. If you really don’t like it, leave right away and go to a neighboring country.

—Become completely unacceptable as an employee at most large companies by publicizing your insanity. This will force you to find alternate means of employment that are more interesting and precarious.

—Take cheap uncomfortable trains in India, even though you can afford more convenient, comfortable, reasonable modes of travel.

—Screw up a bunch of relationships as a way of knowing all of your romantic failure modes, so you can avoid them in the future. Then, fall in love with someone, and propose to them three weeks after you meet.

—Hang out on social networks a lot and post frivolous thoughts. You’ll meet new friends, some of whom will end up directing a lot of money to your bank account. Let Twitter distract you from your work sometimes.

—Publish views that you’ll almost certainly disagree with in the future. This will teach you that it doesn’t matter, that precious few things end up mattering at all.

—Occasionally stay in bad jobs longer than you want to, in order to deepen relationships of no consequence. Sometimes, quit jobs on a whim, even though you’ll immediately regret it. This will reliably shake you out of stasis. Stop doing this at some point.

—Eat and drink everything you possibly can. Disgust is a complex and interesting experience, and being sick in other countries is meditative and humbling.

—Send random emails to people you fear and admire, and present false pretenses for meeting up with them. Either they’ll refuse, or your life will change.

—If someone important is failing to email you back, fly to their city and tell them that you “just happen to be in town.” Most people who won’t take 5 minutes to email you back will take an hour to buy you lunch, and then they’ll give you what you want immediately.