Self Helpy AF: Is It Time To Delete Twitter (Which We'll Still Call Twitter Because X Is Too Cringe)?
Come get some chaotic, benevolent advice from Sara!
Welcome to an occasional advice column by me, Sara Benincasa, a person with many opinions. This column will not diagnose, prescribe, or “cure” anything! Hopefully, reading it will be a treat for your gorgeous brain.
Think of it as a dose of loving care from your chaotic, benevolent aunt, the gal with bright purple eyeshadow who just winks when she catches you smoking your pot drugs with your silly little cousins in the garage. To submit a question, hit me up at saratoninnewsletter@gmail.com. If I use it, I will keep you anonymous.
Should I rip the Band-Aid off and delete Twitter?
You’re still there? Jesus. I deleted my account 10 months ago and that was still later than it should’ve been. It isn’t giving you anything. You’re probably addicted to it. I was. Leave.
I had like 110,000+ followers, some of them actual wonderful humans, many of them robots or brands. The lovely ones and I found each other elsewhere, a process that splendidly continues! Quitting can be fun sometimes. Enjoy it!
If I do a weird voice at work when I answer the phone, everybody hates it. However, it brings ME joy. Am I okay?
Of course you’re okay! You’re better than okay: you’re fabulous. You’re creative, funny, and bizarre. We love this in a human! As long as you aren’t harassing anybody or doing weird corporate crimes with your weird telephone voice, you’re good to go.
This may be a sign that it’s time to look for a goofier job. On the other hand, it may be an invitation from the Universe to do more silly shit at work and bring some good cheer to whatever pristine ivory tower, giant robot factory or grungy strip mall you presumably skip to every weekday.
Show up in a crop top and bikini bottoms under a ballgown under a giant vintage overcoat and just see what happens.
What’s one piece of advice you’d give your 18-year-old self?
Sweet mother of Gawdess, now THIS is a question! The fact that I can only pick one piece of advice to give to Tiny Adult Sara – wow.
I’d tell her to join a well-run, kind, non-scary recovery group for teens, or perhaps for adult children of dysfunctional families. I think she’d learn some necessary skills that few of us get at home: healthy ways to self-soothe; effective conflict resolution techniques; perhaps even mindfulness meditation.
It is good for anyone to join a compassionate, genuinely helpful community of folks of all ages working together to figure out how to be decent to themselves and others (note: a cult – for example, an MLM essential oil scheme – does not count.)
How do I figure out where and when to start a project? It’s easy for some people to simply do things. I’m not sure my brain works that way. Please help.
The easy answer would be for me to say, “Everybody’s brain is a little different. Keep looking up time management strategies and ideas and eventually you’ll come up with your own plan.”
However, I feel that would be a dereliction of my duty as Uncertified Unlicensed Unicorn Advice Givererer. Instead, I will list a few of the books that have helped me.
How to Keep House While Drowning by K.C. Davis, LPC
The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning by Margareta Magnusson
The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron
The Remarkable Life Deck by Debbie Millman
Daily Rituals: Women at Work by Mason Currey
I tend to prefer the gentle approach – it’s what I use with my own writing clients as they develop memoir proposals or novel outlines or whatever we’re working on together. But some folks want a strict taskmaster, and there are certainly accountability buddies and life coaches who can deliver that.
What I like about the final book in particular is that it gives no advice. It just provides examples of how all different artists did their thing. Some of them adhered to rigorous schedules and placed a lot of demands on themselves. Others were loosey-goosey. Many were in-between.
Looking for an example on which you can model your own routine – that may be the most inspiring, motivating way to start. Just know that your difficulty with this is not a moral failing. You are not lazy. You’re trying to solve a puzzle called BRAAAAAAAIN and that is a worthy, if sometimes baffling, endeavor. I wish you the best of luck.
As always, if you commenter types should wish to offer your own suggestions to these questioners, go for it! Take good care of yourselves this weekend, please and thank you.
Telling on myself that I saw Bad Art of a human butt for sale on the street today and I could’ve bought it and sent it to Rebecca as a gift of friendship and devilment but I didn’t. I would like to advice Younger Me from a minute ago to go buy the ass art.
Until I can be sure that some ass won't take the Sketchy Pigeons name and use it to post horrible shit I'm keeping the account. Yes, that is not likely but just keeping the account open and not really using it doesn't harm me. So there's that point to consider.