I might be an old bitter stubborn crumudgeon in a young woman’s body.  Just maybe.  I found this tome on my computer just now.  So looks like someone was in her feelings.

1. I cannot abide Christian worry warts.
If I had not been raised in a Christian home and did not know stories real and parabalized, I would wonder why your God was “worthy to be praised.”  James Cleveland has a song my mama had on vinyl: “Where Is Your Faith [in God]?”

Just so you know, if you ever hear me humming the song as a soundtrack to your whining, I’m throwing shade.  I reckon James Cleveland may have been throwing shade too.  I like to think it was his version of the secular, “the hell?!” we spit out when someone says or does something so utterly ridiculous; something that flies in the face of all that is practical and fits into the conventions they claim to understand and espouse.

2.  If you are rich in this America and you claim the “universe conspired to make it so,” you are probably misled or high.  Yes I believe the Universe conspires to help us meet our best selves when we resolve to let It do Its work.  (Rarely do we do that; we are pretty much control freaks).

But when it comes to wealth, that is not a representation of anyone’s best self in this country where wealth is so rigidly held we know that those who hold it must sleep with the enemy to get it.  (And let’s be honest what you’re calling wealth probably isn’t unless you’re generations in, but we’ll leave that discussion for another occasion).

Quite the incestuous affair, it is–I could name the names and the institutions fronting those names, but you already know.  So the bottom line is if you can still sleep with yourself oh Wealthy One good for you, but we all know who you were really counting sheep with to get into your present position.  Stop pissing on our heads and calling it rain.

3. Higher education is largely a for-profit scam.
Shock of shockers, this one, for all of us buried in student loan debt from “doing the right thing.”

While we were slaving over books to make good grades to get scholarships to get a foothold in our careers, we were being thoroughly primed to exist inside an insidious cycle that cared about us only a mustard seed more than it cared about our peers who chose other routes.

Our degrees have often earned us nothing more than the luxury of securing jobs that will allow us to pay the loans back bit by bit and keep a roof over heads and food in the fridge all at the same time.  And often these jobs do not allow us to express the “critical thinking” being sold as a catchphrase lately to make education seem useful.  Learning is not something that is given to you after you pay a fee, and it only happens to you if you let it.

4. Unless you never intend to achieve anything in life, stop naming yourself by your last accomplishment.  This includes–but is not limited to–parenting, degree-age, and your eating habits.  I am not Darlene-NoMeatMFA-Scott.  No, I am Darlene. Who will hopefully publish my book one day, become one of the most important people of the century, qualify for the Boston Marathon, and just do other stuff that amazes me.  But as far as me amazing you?  Which, I think, is the biggest motivation for such self-naming.  Cause hell, if you’ve run Boston three times already….See how that works?

You are more than any single role, accomplishment, or dream.  But announcements kinda make me think maybe you are not.  Maybe you are just annoying.

5.  Stans are stupid.  Like who you like; like what you like.  But stop refusing to see folks as human beings because you “like” them.  Unless you are their hype man, you should not feel or act on the obligation to co-sign everything they say, do, wear, eat, and breathe on.  Tupac is not Jesus, Muhammad, nor John-the-Baptist, and Beyonce is not a deity.  This goes, too, for writer-on-writer standom; athlete standom; standom in all fields of human endeavor.  Stanning reflects a very ‘tween way of seeing the world.  (Glitter need not be included).

I’m done.  For now.