Chapters:

Chapter 1: First Things First

Welcome to the book that will define the rest of your life. It’s actually an easy definition. It’s the time between now and the day your physical coil expires and you pass into whatever waits after. We’ll be going over that whole mess later. For now lets start with you and work out from there. You, like everyone else on this planet, are full of too much bullshit. We’re going to work on that together. Though, you’ll be doing most of the work. After all I’m just the writer. I can’t actually force you to do anything. Well, I can, but that’s generally considered illegal unless you consent and/or pay a substantial fee for the process.

Moving swiftly along, the first layer of bullshit you can remove from your life is the one that really causes you the most problem and that’s the bullshit of planning ahead farther than six weeks. Sure it’s nice to have dreams, we all do, even I do, and we probably share a few of them! Not the one with the horse trough filled with vodka and the Norwegian curling team, but we’ll keep that one between us. Still, planning for 6 months to a year from now is okay, if it’s a wedding or a funeral. Though if you’re planning a funeral that far ahead, please don’t include me in your plans. I don’t need to be an accessory. Weddings are okay though, provided you have prime rib and maple whiskey.

I never like planning ahead. Doing so often ends up in disappointment, due to changes in jobs, home, hours, friendships, weather, sexuality, number of limbs, and any number of other factors. So instead of planning things out for six months down the road, I only plan for a few weeks ahead at most, unless it’s a dentist appointment or something I don’t feel bad changing or canceling closer to the date. So that’s your first job. Take any plans you have, and if they can’t be done in six weeks or less, break them down into chunks that can be done in that time frame with your current situation. Otherwise you’ll be caught in a cycle of constantly being forced to change your plans because something happened that you weren’t expecting and you have to spend money you were saving, or do something you weren’t expecting, or any number of other reasons (3,887,314,310,589) that can affect your life. By truncating your timetable, dicing up your goals into manageable chunks, cooking over low heat for 20 minutes until the contents have reduced by half… Wait, that’s my recipe for tomato glaze…