bad advice : it happens to a lot of guys

by mg at 08:28 AM on April 20, 2001

No Bad Advice this week, I’m hardly in the mental shape to be help myself out, much less someone else. Not that my advice has ever been particularly helpful, but you know what I mean. If I tried this now, my advice might be so bad as to actually get someone killed. I know how powerful my words can be.

I’ve spent the last couple days, on the edge between my first 25 years and my next 25 years, in a particularly introspective mood. I’m a pretty contemplative person to begin with, and really, it’s not as if there aren’t a million things that have come up in the past few months that deserve thinking about. But I keep thinking and thinking, and never come up with anything worthwhile.

I spent 15 minutes yesterday standing on the corner of 8th Street and Broadway in Manhattan, trying to figure out whether I wanted to head east, toward St. Mark’s Place, or north, toward Union Square. There wasn’t anything I particularly wanted in either direction, so it was a decision between the lesser of two boredoms. Kind of like every American election in the last 30 years.

I ended up heading north. I stopped in at the Strand, where they’ve got 8 miles of books. I was looking for a reviewer’s copy of American Gods, the new Neil Gaiman novel. I also looked for the new novel by one of my former professors.

I didn’t find the Gaiman book (which means you can still get it for me as

a late Birthday present). And I picked up, but didn’t buy the book by my former English professor. Just another case of indecision.

I left the Strand and walked up to the Virgin Megastore. I spend way too much time in the Virgin Megastore. I went to every single listening station and picked up about a dozen CDs. I ended up buying nothing. More indecision.

I’m guess this is what being impotent must feel like. When you are impotent, the desire is there and all the tools are at your disposal, but for some reason, you can’t get everything together to make things happen. That is exactly how I’m feeling about my life. I’ve got an impotent brain.

It isn’t as if my life is going badly. I’ve got opportunities in life, love, and work. It’s like a beautiful and horny woman is giving me a 3a.m. booty call, but I have to say no to her because when she gets to my place, nothing is going to be happen. I just can’t seem to get it up. I can’t take advantage of the metaphorical boobies that are there, waiting for me to grab them.

So, on my birthday, instead of a nice dinner with the family, or going out drinking copious amounts of alcohol with my mates, I decided to stay home and meditate on my life. I took the night off from everything, in order to give myself some kind of creativity Viagra.

It worked, I think.

First off, I decided to forget about having any sort of significant romantic relationship in the near future. Instead, I’ll just be having meaningless sex whenever I get the opportunity. I’ve also decided to close the door on old relationships. I might run with one of my exes in the future, but it will be something new. No holding onto the past just because it is the comfortable thing to do.

Being uncomfortable is also what spurred me to make my job decision. I decided to take the job I’d been debating with myself about for the past couple weeks. It isn’t exactly what I want, and it is a little scary, but I will have the opportunity to get some more experience, to get out of the house everyday, and to make money, which is really the most important thing.

I plan to save every single penny that I make, so that if I absolutely hate it, I can leave and not be forced into consuming a diet of nothing but white rice and grub worms, like just another Survivor cast member. I’ve also been running low on office supplies. A job is at least a good opportunity to get some free paper clips.

So, I guess I did end up giving advice to someone this week, myself. It’ll be interesting to see just how good or bad it is.