Author Archives: TheBlackhairedGuy

About TheBlackhairedGuy

I'm a guy. And I have black hair. Well not really because it is slowly turning grey. I suppose TheNotquiteBlackhairedGuy doesn't have quite the same ring to it, does it? I write the blog EverythingSucks.blog as well as dabble in some freelance writing.

Introspective Drinking Sucks

A few nights ago I was sitting on the steps outside drinking and was having a great time doing so. I got into my head and realized a few really important things that should’ve been obvious but due to the intricacies and difficulties of actually knowing yourself weren’t that obvious to me until I had a few drinks. I also thought it might be fun to list them as sort of a rough “to-do blog list” for 2020 because each one has quite a bit of baggage to unpack. In total I could probably write about seven blog posts about the topics below, especially the ones involving artistic expression and personal fulfillment, and the ones that struggle to ask, “Who am I? Really?” They are:

I can’t comprehend that people actually care about me. More importantly I don’t know what causes me to be this way.
I don’t know if flying or flight instructing is the correct career choice for me due to the lack of artistic expression.
Artistic careers take a fuckton of effort, way more than I thought. Do I need to go all-in on artistic creation or can I do it as a hobby? To be a writer, do I need to ignore all other jobs/careers and write nonstop or can you forge a job out of a hobby?
I doubt any possible success at an artistic career (like writing/blogging) because I believe I have no talent in it. Even knowing that inherent talent is bullshit — it’s all practice to be good at something — I still can’t get my brain to accept it. It’s the same as people caring about me: I know I have talent but something in my brain won’t accept it. And I don’t know why.
Everything I do makes perfect sense to me for the most part. And everything anyone else does makes sense to them. People don’t act irrationally outside of a few exceptions that are probably like less than 1% of the human race. No one has anything to explain to anyone, and I’m included.

Phew. I don’t even want to elaborate on anything currently because they’re all headache inducing. I also have to state that when I realized these things I had a totally neutral state of mind; there was no depression or happiness or any emotional context to them; it was just me being totally honest with myself. But what I do want to elaborate on here is what got me to realize these things: alcohol.

The introspection that I’d gotten the other night is what mostly drives me to drink. The deep meditative state that you sometimes get. Sadly, and kinda proving my point here, is that this is a rare thing indeed: I’ve only achieved this state one other time while drinking that I can remember. One of the problems with alcohol being shitty is in how uncontrollable it is. I have no idea what mood I’ll be in when I actually get a few drinks in me.

A good example is tonight. My original plan was to have a few drinks and start pounding out blog posts/stories. It’s taken a total of seven drinks to get me to type this with the rest of the night being totally pissed away with me being distracted with random things like YouTube and video games, and this is how drinking always works. Some nights you piss hours away playing Kerbal Space Program. Some nights you set off drinking in a good mood and find yourself with crippling depression thinking about how you could possibly carry on with another day. Some days you get balls-deep into a six-pack and find that ideas come out of nowhere and you start on a marathon session of writing despite being exhausted. Some nights you believe a bike ride and a naked swim in the river is just the thing you need to do. Some days you sit on the porch and have deeply introspective thoughts that lead you to areas of your psyche that you never knew existed. The truth is you never know what you’re going to get and that is shitty indeed.

My Cynical New Year Sucked

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“Hey, there’s my cynicism and negativity! I was wondering where it went. After being moderately positive the past few days I was worried I was going through legitimate changes. Good to know it’s still there.”

I live in the central time zone and this means we’re one hour behind New York’s time, it being in the Eastern US. This usually leads to the TV on New Year’s being changed to watch their New Year’s celebration because it’s kinda like the actual celebration for the entire US. I wonder how West Coast people feel about this, seeing New York do their thing three hours before their New Year, but maybe West Coasters don’t give a shit about New York and what they do.

I think we turned it to Dick Clark’s New Year’s 2020 (apparently the real title of this bullshit is Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve with Ryan Seacrest 2020) immediately after the ball dropped. I noted this was on ABC because I immediately started to wonder what shitty network was covering the New York celebration. ABC. Those were the assholes.

The first thing to kill my mood was the total mass of people in Times Square. Probably tens or hundreds-of-thousands of people all huddled around for who knows how long. This always reminds of a Reddit thread I seen a long time ago where someone pointed out that people in Times Square are usually tourists; no real New Yorker would subject themselves to the unique hell that is the Time’s Square New Year’s Ball Dropping shit. Even stranger is that to actually be there you apparently need to show up like a half a day early. These people had been standing here waiting for 12:00 a.m. January, 1 2020 for over six hours, maybe more. And making this even worse is most wear diapers. If you leave to take a piss/shit you lose your spot. And it’s so cool to be there that you can’t do that! So in this crowd of maybe a few hundred thousand people I imagine them all with adult diapers filled with piss and perhaps shit and the torture of standing in a single area for a quarter of a day. How can you be happy with a filled diaper? Were these people really happy? Or were they miserable and just wanted those sweet social media likes and to maybe end up on TV?

After the actual ball dropped, the crowd seemed to thin quickly. But there were still the lingerers laying down in confetti with their significant others taking selfies. You know, for that sweet social media credit. Selfies everywhere. I get it — capture the moment — but shit. It reminds me of the St. Vincent lyric from the song “Digital Witness”: If I can’t show it, you can’t see me. The only reason to do anything in life is to take pictures of it and show others on social media. If social media never sees it, does it really happen? I was in New York! I was in Times Square! I wore goddamn diapers full of piss to do so! My life is so much more adventurous than everyone else’s!

Then there’s the jackass who proposed to his fiance on national TV. Oh boy. Let’s be as contrived as possible. At first I thought they were going to interview some random guy asking the usual bullshit questions. “How does it feel to be here? What’s it like?” I mean they sorta did this but the guy looked awkward like he had another purpose for being important enough to be interviewed, turned to his fiance, and did the whole typical proposal deal. “There’s no one else I’d rather spend this moment with,” he bends down on one knee and get’s a box out — here we go — “would you marry me?!” She cries, nods yes, and the crowd goes wild.

This was all about 12:10 a.m. New York time — 11:10 p.m. central time — and my mood was already spiraling down the drain.

Ryan Seacrest was hosting along with some lady (apparently Lucy Hale? Okay.) and when I turned to the channel there was like six Asian people joining him. I don’t know who the hell they were, maybe a k-pop group? And then there was some asshole dressed in a shiny purple outfit with tattoos on his face. Who the fuck was this? Some part of my mind that holds information I didn’t even know thought, “Is that Post Malone?” How the fuck do I know what Post Malone looks like? My mom is all about that dipshit and goes on and on about how good he his. “He can make a rock or a metal album because he’s that versatile,” she has said before. I still didn’t think I knew what he looked like. I don’t really listen to his music or care, but goddamn he was dressed like a douche.

I was thinking of posting a picture but, naw, fuck it. Google it if you really want to see him.

He was also drinking what I’m assuming was alcohol out of what looked like a red Solo cup. Part of me wondered what it would be like drinking alcohol on national TV. Did he have his cup and asked the producers if he could drink it on the stage? How would you feel drinking on national TV? Somehow I don’t think any of these thoughts occured to Mr. Malone dressed as awfully as he was.

Then we were gifted with a segment about the Powerball lottery or something. It was a drawing of a possible number between one and five. And whoever of the five people won would get a million dollars. Obviously this wasn’t a real lottery because what lottery has a one-in-five chance of winning a million dollars? It was a promo stunt. A way to ring in the New Year by telling people to play the fucking Powerball lottery. Fuck all to all those people who have gambling problems and made a resolution to change that awful addiction. Play the goddamn Powerball lottery everyday in 2020! Especially cringy was when the host asked the typical question to the new winner: “So how do you feel right now?!”

Then the Jonas Brothers. Once again I don’t really know their music and don’t give two fucks about them and don’t hate them, but it was strange to see them live. They’re a “boy band” apparently just like N’Sync and The Backstreet Boys were back in the 90s, and mostly the three stood on stage and sang songs while a band played all the actual music behind them. One of them played a shitty three cords for an entire song with a single barred finger on the fretboard. That was it? Why the fuck haven’t I record any music yet? I’m not an amazing musician but I can plop a song together with more than three bar chords. Fuck. I can even use a delay pedal!

Luckily the next song had a bit more going on where they actually played some music of consequence. Still, the backing band did most of the actual work. The crowd went wild, and wow, wouldn’t it just be cool to be there? What would it feel like to actually be there?!

That’s about it for the national TV bullshit. I migrated into another room and watched a Scott Manley video about the most important achievements in space in the past decade. Ya know, actual informative, interesting, and non-corporate-sponsored-fun-and-partying enjoyment. But what does it feel like to be part of the crowd?! Doesn’t that matter?!

It wasn’t finished yet though. A certain segment of my family used to love calling us at midnight to scream “HAPPY NEW YEAR!” and fuck dealing with that. Many years ago I just stopped answering my phone, sometimes even turning the damn thing off. It would happen every year like clockwork because it basically was clockwork.

It’s been a bit different the past few years with the advent of fancy social media sites like Facebook. No calling is required now; all you need to do is find some gaudy, low-quality .jpg or .gif and spam it to your entire friend list on Facebook Messenger. Obviously it contains the cancer-causing and virulent phrase along the lines of “send this to all of your friends!” which apparently people actually follow. Maybe I should send images with my bank account number saying, “Send $100 to this account and God will bless you!” I’d probably be rich.

Since this family segment is also their own little family, I got the same image from four fucking people. Aunt, uncle, cousin, and somehow my dad. My dad went even more drastic with this image by posting it to his Facebook Messenger story. He has never posted a single thing to his story so I was actually surprised. “Dad updated his story? What? Why? Really?” I opened it up and it was the same fucking image flashing away, tempting my mind to finally have a seizure.

As much as this makes me physically ill to see again, I feel I need to post it. I’m sure you guys know exactly what I’m talking about but here it is anyways:

Let’s see if we can keep this moving to friends and family. (The double space is intentional between “this” and “moving”)

As much as the first hour prior and after the actual New Year sucked, my mental state is still pretty positive. It weathered the storm of my cynicism. I mean I’m still cynical as fuck, but everything else is positive. I think about the people I actually care about — not those insane fuckers in New York or those in Miami watching The Jonas Brothers — and hope they had a good night and will have a good 2020. I hope everyone achieves their potentials this year. Despite the cynicism, I’m trying to see today as a fresh start and will try to do my best in 2020 even if I am terribly flawed just as everyone else is flawed. 15 hours in and the New Year is pretty good so far.

New Year's Resolutions (Don't) Suck?

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Note: I don’t want to write. I don’t want to post. I don’t want to think about the optimal time to schedule a post. But I have to: this post has a dictated timeframe with it being about the goddamn New Year. I simply don’t have a choice. So time to buckle down and force something out against my will. This is the struggle of blogging.

I’ve never been a fan of making New Year’s Resolution (as you can read here) but I recently watched a YouTube video by Veritasium that has somehow gotten me totally hyped for the New Year. (I’ll link it below if I can figure out how to do so. You know, learning WordPress and all…) Like I’ve bought into all the bullshit about it for some reason. Maybe it’s because I’ve felt like the past year or two has been an incomprehensible blur and I want a firm date to change my mindset and make small but perceptible changes to my self and my life? I don’t know. At this point I’m not trying to question my random positive mood here. I’m running with it as is because it is a rare and uplifting thing for me to do.

HOLY SHIT LINKING TO A VIDEO WORKED! ON POST 101 I’VE LEVELED UP!

If you didn’t watch the video, Derek explains a few key takeaway points about resolutions:

New Year’s is the best time to set out to do something
Despite #1 most resolutions fail because of the following three reasons:
Resolutions need to be small and not too big or dramatic
They need to be measurable and clear. Vague resolutions will almost always fail
They mustn’t require a ton of willpower

When you’re given these restraints you instantly see the idea of resolutions as better than the popular pipe-dreams you typically hear spouted off. Instead of criticizing people for picking random and unachievable stuff like “be a better person” or “lose weight” you start to realize that maybe by picking smaller and easier to achieve things you might actually be able to fundamentally change yourself in the ~~365~~ 366 days that are 2020 (2020 is a leap year?! Hello February 29th!). Given these restraints you might start to feel emboldened: maybe New Year’s Resolutions are a good way to start your journey throughout the New Year?

As for my actual resolutions, I’m leaning towards something like giving a single compliment to someone every day. It’s not dramatic, it’s measurable, and achievable but at the same time me going out of my mostly negative and reclusive shell to actually dish out compliments might do me good in the long run. Like Derek said, it’s the idea behind improving 1% a day which leads to massive improvements over time. Now that I think of this more, it does seem pretty adventurous too; what do I do on weekends when I’m only around family? Do I make a pact to only compliment strangers because complimenting family is too easy? Where I’ll have to compliment the denizens that inhabit Walmart or the local derelict gas station? There are some details to work out here for sure because I see some easy ways out for my future self. But I think it’s a good start.

Another possible idea I’ve discovered scouring Veritasium’s YouTube page (he mentioned putting resolutions in the comments) was to wake up early every day. I have a nasty habit of waking up at 12 p.m. after pissing away hours in bed looking a Reddit between 12-3 a.m. so this might help my mood, writing, blogging, productivity, etc. Other random and possible ideas I might settle on are reading something everyday, writing something everyday, and only drinking on Sunday. They are mostly small, easy to enact, and measurable (if I clear up the general “something” that is) so should be accomplishable, but as stated I still have two days to flesh out my ideas into something more concrete. Let me know what your resolutions are below so I might be able to steal them if they’re good enough.

New Year’s Resolutions suck. But this year I’m finding myself embracing them.

Closing Note: I’ve also had this terrible idea to make shirts hating on the New Year.

Selling Tshirts Suck (Part Two)

The 100th Blog Post Sucks: A Reflection (and something about Christmas I guess)

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Let me complain…

I didn’t intend for this be posted on Christmas (or whatever the fuck you celebrate) but that’s what happened I guess, mostly because I actually have some free time to work on something. I’m also forced to post this next because it’s about the 100th post; I can’t post it where it’s the 102nd post because that would be dumb and wouldn’t make sense. Not that anyone would really notice but it would bother me.

I’m really proud of this. I was hit with inspiration a few days ago and when inspiration hits you need to run with it. Even if it is something really fucking stupid like this.

It’s surprising that I haven’t written anything about Christmas sucking yet, and I think I have a reason: Christmas sucks so damn much it’s too big of a project to tackle. It’s THE big, main holiday that is also awful in a way that no other holiday is awful. You have to buy gifts. You get to spend a shitton of money. You have to socialize. You have to see your family. You might have to travel. You have to deal with crowds. It’s cold out. Sometimes it’s snowy. And when you work at UPS it adds a whole extra layer of hell that few people can comprehend. The past month for me has been a total blur. I have no idea where I am or what I’m doing. Pure. Chaos.

So no Christmas post yet because it’s too massive and shitty to write about. But today is Christmas so I should probably say something, so Merry Christmas (or whatever the fuck you celebrate). And if you think there is a “War on Christmas” happening then have a big, fat HAPPY HOLIDAYS! I’m sending positive vibes to anyone who needs them, and I’m sure plenty of you do.

The Actual Post…

One thing I always have been proud of was the foresight to plop an “All Posts” button on the menu. Other blogs are a goddamn mess where you need to endlessly scroll to find posts without a nice and tidy place to see them all. I’m terrified of being lost or having an “unintuitive” webpage design, so tried to keep it nice. Also by having an “All Posts” page, I can quickly link to my past blog posts without searching through tons of bullshit to find them. Right click, copy address, link to it. It really is handy. And hopefully you realize how much I love my backlinks.

Another fun thing about this “All Posts” page is seeing all the posts I’ve actually written in a group together. Like fuck, I’ve really written that many blog posts? I know the WordPress “Posts” menu tells you how many you’ve posted, but this is just a number. Seeing a 98 is a lot different than seeing 98 links in a row with blog titles and all. It really hits home that you’ve written 98 blog posts and how many that really is. It’s surprising, especially since starting I’ve always been terrified of “running out of ideas,” like I would eventually write everything I wanted to write and be “done” with writing. I know it’s an unfounded fear, but it still lurks around in the back of my head like some ugly, terrifying, but totally fictitious demon. I know it’s there, I know it’s harmless, but it’s still scary.

I’m was surprised but not surprised to see this post from YouTuber Medhi Sagahhakagika (Yeah close enough) on his channel ElectroBOOM. You might’ve seen him before; he’s the guy who fucks around with electricity and shocks himself all the time. Seemingly an idiot, he is a very smart guy when you really dig deep into the videos; he really knows what he’s doing. Anyways, he posted this a few months ago:

Change “video” to “blog post” and you got it.

Apparently he suffers the same thing I, and probably most bloggers do, the post-posting depression! The fear you feel after posting something and being terrified that you have no other ideas to write about. Naturally, obviously, and realistically, and every other -ly you can think of, this fear is unfounded. We always come up with new shit to create inevitab-LY and there is nothing to be scared of. Hello demon, I still see you lurking back there and apparently everyone else has one too, even popular and successful YouTuber ElectroBOOM has one just like you. I guess it’s nice to know you’re not alone with your unfounded fears and anxieties.

And you have to realize the demon is full of shit if you’ve made it to the 100th post. Ya for me. Yay for persistence. Yay for sticking with it. Yay for blogging.

I think it’s fitting that I also wrote a bullshit stupid first post talking about how the first post, or anything you attempt, is going to be shit. I think this naturally frames the 100th post in a way to look back on the growth I’ve experienced as a writer. I think I have gotten better at writing, but I can’t explain why or how I know this clearly. It just seems like ideas flow a little easier, or that I’ve changed my clunky sentence structures from earlier into something slightly more graceful. Or that my language has become slightly more descriptive and colorful. The demon metaphor is a good example I guess although I was really proud of the “aluminum foil rubbed on your eardrum” line from this post. Or that I’ve began to use sentence fragments on purpose and not because I’m an idiot. Or that I start sentences with and, because, or, or so on purpose because it’s fun to do. Immediacy to the sentences. Stream of consciousness. Thoughts popping into your head. Yeah, like that.

As objectively as possible I’ve realized that writing is now easier. I post more frequently. I’m worrying less about what I’m writing and how people will receive it and just post it. I’m also more open with sharing my writings and thoughts with others; a year ago I wouldn’t dream of sending blog links to friends even if the topics were about something they would find interesting/relate to. This might be a side effect of actually having self-esteem, but with practice you also become better and stop giving as much of a shit as before. Starting off you think you might be writing some either amazing or terrible things and treat them accordingly. I view what I write as just another blog post amongst a literal hundred: some are better than others and some are shit, but I don’t think I have masterpieces or complete failures. Just another day at the ‘puter I guess.

I think to sum it all up: it’s nice to see yourself making progress. Writing, being one of the arts, usually involves painfully slow progress where you don’t even feel like you’re progressing at all. Post after post rolls on by and you think you still suck at what you’re trying to do. But after 100 posts maybe I have improved? I made it to 100 and that’s an achievement on it’s own, it’s progress in it’s own right, and even if I haven’t improved I still have something to show for the work.

So here’s to the next 100.

The Weekend Sucks

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To start this off let me state that this is the 99th post on this blog. Wow. As anyone who blogs knows, starting is always the hardest part and you find yourself constantly filled with anxiety about how you can continue to write posts. Like it was a struggle to write the first, second, third, tenth, twentieth post and how can you keep going? But 100? Shit. I’ve almost done it. I’ve been planning to elaborate on that in the next post — the 100th one — and have been wanting to just bullshit my way through the 99th one which is this one. Not that I’m not mildly inspired, but after a week of working nonstop 12-hours days I just want to get something out, even if it is subpar. (And by it being “subpar” everyone will probably fucking love it for some reason.)

I hit a wall of depression last weekend. And looking back on most of my depressive episodes I’ve realized they mostly happen on the weekend. My mood throughout the week is like clockwork; on Monday I’m kinda lethargic and depressed but don’t think about things, and on Tuesday through Thursday I’m great. I’m at work and busy. Any free time before 4:00 p.m. is filled with coffee drinking blogging/writing stories and then I go to work. This is why I always seem to have a post up on Monday or Tuesday, it’s just my flow or something trying to capitalize on my free time before work. Friday is a really slow off-day where I’m like gearing up for my weekly weekend depressive episode with going to work at 7 p.m.; I’m given enough off-time where I get antsy and don’t know what to do but ultimately still have work to distract me. And then Saturday and Sunday are hell. Some weeks are worse than others, but they’re always really shitty.

With all the hours I’ve been working lately something has been painfully obvious to me: keeping busy keeps a depressive’s mind off of being depressed. Literally for 12 hours each day in the past three weeks I have been so busy to where I cannot reflect or overthink anything about my life. I wrote a quick fictional chapter over at my other blog about my daily routine and while quite a bit is exaggerated for effect the general theme is true. I wake up at 9 a.m. and pound caffeine for an hour until I go to work. I then deal with total chaos and bullshit until my hour or two lunch break. This is usually filled with tagging along with coworkers to a restaurant or their house or whatever. (My car is out of service so I’m driving an uninsured and non-exhaust-equipped 1997 Saturn SL 2 to work everyday. Coworkers offer to shuttle me around between shifts so I don’t have to really think about what I’m going to do. I just tag along.) Then it’s back to work for my second shift. I get off around 10 p.m. and dick around for a few exhausted hours at home playing video games and drinking tea until I go to bed. Repeat for weeks. Grind away with each little problem that arises without care for the general direction of life. Doing this I’m perfectly and happily distracted.

Until the weekend that is. I think it’s made worse by the hours I’m working. When you work six days straight and are so constantly busy that you can’t get your bearings you simply don’t have time to think. No time to reflect upon the position and trajectory of your life. To think about how other people perceive you. No time to think about how you’ll actually die one day, really, and that it is inevitable as the sun rising in the morning. And how every day, hour, and minute you piss away is wasting away the very gift of life that you own. No time to shit all over yourself for not keeping up with writing/blogging like you should’ve been doing. No time to think about all the things you’ve said at work and ponder how they’re received by your coworkers. No time to question if everyone only acts like they like you while secretly hating you. No time to let your mind wander to where you see yourself as the odd-man out, the lonely person that isn’t really part of the group, the excluded one. There are others and then there is you: singular, alone, trapped in a box and unable to bond with anyone. No time to wonder why you feel this way even though there is no reason to do so. The weekend gives me plenty of time for all of these pointless, illogical, and dark feelings to well up in my mind and overwhelm me.

Making it worse is the fact that it’s all so damn irrational. I’ve finally found some self-esteem. I realize that I’m a likeable person, at least towards those I actually want to be likeable towards. Yet the weekend gives me these random thoughts that I’m just not busy enough to kill. I think I almost crave the hellish work of life, because that is what keeps my mind from overthinking and wandering to darker things that lurk around in my head. I really do hate being as busy as I’ve been, but it’s been keeping me sane and happy. Dumb, unaware, and unthinking but fucking happy. It reminds me of animals who live their day-to-day lives in total peace and seemingly unawareness. They just do what they need to do and don’t overthink like us stupid humans do.

I don’t know. Maybe I should try to have a weekend hobby or something, but the problem here is hobbies are optional and I would never purposefully subject myself to the type of hell that was work even if it does make me happy. “Why don’t you just constantly write on the weekends dude?” you might ask. Well, you can’t force yourself to write for two days straight if you’re not inspired and writing also involves some degree of self-introspection that can bring about the dark feelings that I’m trying to avoid. I don’t have a solution to the problem; I hate the weekends for the same reason that I hate vacations and I don’t know how to fix the problem.

So there it is: number 99.

Holiday Shopping Sucks: Difficult People to Shop For

Note: I’m posting this fully from the mobile app. While I did most of the heavy lifting on PC, I’ve never actuall posted from the WordPress app, so please excuse any screwed up formatting.

Today, at least the day I’m trying to write a draft for this post, is the 17th. This leaves me eight days to get my Christmas shopping done, and unless I want to pay a fortune for shipping it all but eliminates any online options. Hell, the stuff I ordered on Amazon three days ago might not show up until after the holidays thanks to me being as cheap as possible and selecting the “free shipping” option at checkout. That isn’t relevant here; what is relevant is that time is running out. Time is always running out but the Christmas season really puts it starkly into view. You’re left with a month or so (depending on how bad your procrastination is) to buy a small mountain of gifts for your friends/family. What should be a joyous time to show your love and appreciation for people turns into a fucking chore. You have to buy them gifts. It also seems to be a busy time of year, especially for idiots like myself in the package shipping/delivery business, where you find yourself with days slipping and flying by without making any progress whatsoever on your shopping list.

Luckily I only have a handful of people to still buy gifts for, but one thing seems clear: these people are all similar in what makes them hard to shop for. I’ve noticed there’s the “I don’t want any presents” type of person, and the person that simply doesn’t like anything. And there’s also the type of person who you have no fucking clue what they would want, who might be an off-shoot of one of the previously mentioned types from above. This gave me a fun idea, at least where blogging is concerned: maybe I can bitch about the types of people you need to shop for? Categorize these fuckers who are so hard to find gifts for? While it won’t save my ass in the remaining eight days I have, it will make me feel somewhat productive on the blogging front. Gotta rake in those views while you can, right?

The People You Don’t Even Know

This is an easy category: people you don’t know. Who comes to mind here? I’m thinking my cousin’s kids actually. (Are they second cousins or cousins once removed? I don’t know.) I have no goddamn clue what they like to do for fun or what their hobbies are — and I can barely spell their names properly — so obviously how am I supposed to shop for them? There is also the question as to how close people need to be to you to buy them gifts? The social cues and all. Our family is so poor that I don’t have to buy them gifts really, but my point isn’t that, it’s that some people you don’t even know vaguely enough to buy them presents. This usually requires you to ask their parents what they want, and damn if they don’t even know. “Just get them gift cards to McDonald’s,” I’ve really been told before. Yikes. How about a few $20 bills instead?

The “I Don’t Want Anything” People

This is my dad. You can’t get anything out of him. Making this even worse is that he’s also from the next category: people who don’t have hobbies. I’ll touch on that in a bit because that’s what really makes these people shitty to shop for. I’m one of them myself, but at least I have interests and hobbies that could still point people in the right direction for a gift even if I really don’t want one. Someone could still find something for me if they really wanted to do so.

And as for myself: I really, seriously, actually don’t want anything. It isn’t a matter of being gracious or anything; I just don’t want a damn thing for Christmas. Usually if I need something I’ll go buy it myself, or the things I do need are so specific that I don’t want to trust people gifting them to me. They always buy sort of the right thing but not quite the right thing. I just don’t need any presents. Sometimes you’re the one who is shitty to shop for, at least for other people. And I’m well-aware it’s frustrating for others. I’m basically complaining about myself here and yes I suck and am hard to shop for.

People With No Hobbies

As stated before, the real shitty thing with my dad is not that he doesn’t want any gifts, it’s the fact that he really doesn’t do anything either. My dad’s day, while I’m not 100% certain about it, goes something like this: he wakes up. He eats food that is shitty for his health. He turns the TV on to it doesn’t really matter. (He also has antenna TV so no fancy cable, WiFi, or anything really, just local stations.) He smokes cigarettes. He falls asleep on the couch. He drives to my grandma’s/my uncle’s to help do random shit for them. He goes to work. He sleeps. Repeat.

Not to gripe too much about my parents again (go here I guess) but I really think my dad struggles with depression. He’s a man without interests or hobbies and I think depression is to blame. Whatever the cause is doesn’t matter: try to figure out a gift for a person who literally does nothing for fun or enjoyment. What do I do, get him a pack of cigarettes or something? A gift card for a gas station? Pay one of his electric bills? Give him a free month on the phone bill?

People with Complex Hobbies/Hobbies You Know Nothing About

Some people are really passionate about things, but to such a degree that you simply can’t buy them any actual gifts. Think about the hardcore musician/guitarist. They’re probably so in the thick of their musical passion that they have a favorite brand/size of guitar strings, about twenty effects pedals they use, a certain type of pick they use, and so on. You couldn’t even get them a handful of guitar picks without buying the hopelessly wrong item, even if it is only slightly wrong. They’re so far along in their hobby that you have to know the details of it even to attempt to buy them a gift. Let’s also not forget the high cost of having an upper-level hobby. Buying someone a $100 beginner’s guitar is one thing — buying someone a $5,000 upper end guitar is a whole other level of insanity.

A good example here is, well, my dad again. You see before he was super depressed he was very much into photography but was so far along that you couldn’t buy him anything for it. His few cameras and lenses literally cost thousands of dollars. What would you get a person like this? An SD card? When he already had about five of them? A tripod? Because the two he already had somehow weren’t good enough? A fucking monopod? No. Even if he did have a hobby he was so deep into the hobby that there was nothing you could really buy him.

People Who Want Uninspired Gifts

I also despise people who give you tons of gift ideas but where they’re all uninspired gifts — gifts you can’t sink any meaning or thought into. Like a sweater. Or pants. Perhaps clothes in general. A certain video game. They seem so bland and boring because you simply buy the exact same item they want and there is zero creativity on the gift-giver. Part of the fun of buying gifts is honing in on what they love and surprising them with it. Showing them that yes you do pay attention and care about them and resorting to buying bland gifts just feels so, well, bland. I’ve given up buying my aunts and uncles candles because they’re so damn boring. I’ve just given up.

I want to get something that promotes self-expression or hobbies or your passions in life. Buying a goddamn pair of socks for someone — even if they really fucking want socks — just seems so shitty.

Note: This is a grey area really as you can have “uninspired sounding” gifts that are really inspired. Consider someone who really likes knee-high, multicolored and mismatched, fuzzy toe socks. Getting them “just socks” would be boring as fuck while getting them some crazy, ridiculous socks would be “thoughtful.” Context matters I guess?

People Who Want Gifts They Won’t Even Like

What happens when someone asks for The Sims (or any PC game really) when they only have a shitty five year old laptop that barely loads or operates at all. When you know their gift idea is total shit but can’t tell them this because they want it really badly. You buy it for them, begrudgingly, and they hate it and never use it.

I think kids are very terrible in this aspect because they live in the fantasy of the gift and not the reality. Another example: battery-powered cars. Their own car! That they can drive! Wow! What about in the winter when you can’t use it? What about when you lose the charger and can’t charge the battery? What about when the battery is dead but the kids really want to drive it? These really aren’t winter/Christmasy gifts, but think about trampolines and swimming pools: all the work required for something that will be ignored in a few weeks.

It seemed I had more to say about this topic especially because it applies to capitalism-in-general’s power to convince people to buy shit that they don’t really want or need. I also thought I had more examples but hopefully you get the idea. It’s grandma asking for the hottest and latest “As Seen on TV” product. No grandma, you don’t need Flex-Seal to fix a leaky boat. You don’t own a leaky boat.

The Deep Gifts that are Impossible to Find

I hold the belief that people really don’t know what they want in life, and Christmas gifts are no different. I say this because of a few childhood experiences I’ve had. I was like everyone else and had no real idea what the hell I wanted, and I mean deep down inside what I wanted. I was the typical kid who would ask for video games, toys, legos, etc. and while I liked these things, they never really resonated with me in a crazy life-changing way.

You might wonder what the hell I’m getting at here, but around 1998 or so I received this game I didn’t know existed called Flight Simulator ‘98. It was, as you can guess, a flight simulator game but it wasn’t like all the other shitty aviation games I had played up until that point. It wasn’t some shitty combat game; it was a simulator. Twelve year old me took quite a while for this fact to set it because I literally had to figure out how to fly an airplane in a fairly realistic way, but I eventually figured it out.

I use this as an example of a deep gift because of how much this stupid game changed my life. I was an avid flight simmer and owned every game until the line was discontinued with Flight Simulator X. And I didn’t just play the game like a casual; I was serious about it. I made flight plans and used actual approach charts and tried to keep things as realistic as possible. While already being a huge aviation nerd, the Flight Simulator series cemented my love of piloting and basically taught me to fly airplanes. When I actually began taking flight lessons I already had a ton of the basics down. And when it came time to get the dreaded instrument rating? I was a goddamn pro at flying with instruments because I had been doing so on shitty PCs since 1998!

These are the kind of gifts I would love to get people: the presents that they don’t even know they want. Some random gift that they’re not sure about but they will remember decades later that might even change their lives. I’ve tried to get a few gifts like these over the years, but nothing seems to have stuck. Maybe you can’t gift these things deliberately and they have to be “happy accidents.” I’m sure my parents buying this for me was an accident with their thought process being something like, “He likes planes. This is a ‘plane game.’ Let’s buy him this.”

In closing

I suppose dealing with people like this wouldn’t be very bad in isolation, like for a singular birthday or something, but when there is one holiday where you buy everyone stuff it becomes a chore. I only have about four or five people left to shop for, but everyone of them fits into at least one of the categories I just bitched about. Buying gifts for people who don’t want anything, hunting for presents for people who want stuff they won’t even like, and so on. I’m sure I’ve forgotten a handful of other frustrating people types, so let me know what type of people make your holidays total hell.

Everything Sucks

All things that Suck, and a few things that are Awesome