The other day I found myself bitching again. I didn’t know I was doing it at the time, but I knew something was wrong. A girl that I was trying to seduce was not responding to my advances. Try as I may, the pimp juice just wasn’t working. But that is the canary in the coal mine, so to speak. The girl was trying to tell me something, but she was trying to be nice to spare my ego. Nevertheless her actions spoke loud and clear.

Why are you acting like a little bitch?

Most of the time you don’t catch yourself bitching and moaning. And by the time you do catch yourself (if you ever do), it’s already over. It’s just like what Steve Jobs said, you cannot connect the dots looking forward; things only make sense looking back (y’know, when the damage is done and now you need a drink). Why? Because a bad habit hides under rational things—things that often make you feel oppressed, unappreciated, like a martyr or a victim.

Creative people—us tortured snowflakes who dub ourselves Artistes with a capital ‘a’—are notorious for engaging in such fits of temper. Little do we know that such tendencies encourage and promote bitch-habits, which must be resisted at all costs.

For instance, you may be starving because your “dedication” to the craft and “perseverance” despite the odds have now rendered you destitute and nutrient deficient. You may find parts of your eyeballs twitching while talking to someone. You may have to pretend it’s not happening, or hide the fact that you’re worried sick because you think it’s brain cancer. So you’re stressed out and low on potassium. Big fucking deal! Eat a goddamn banana and get on with your life!

Other times you may feel tired since you don’t get enough sleep. You’re low on vitamin-D because you’ve been cooped up in your room working on a project. Now all you want to do is find a sympathetic soul and complain. Well you know what? Go fuck yourself! Get your ass to Costco, get some goddamn multivitamins, go back to your dungeon and finish what you started!

Bitching is tempting because it’s convenient, like rubbing pity all over your genitals so others can feel sorry for you. But such progression of bad decisions must be stopped. It’s the same with any endeavors in life. You want a six pack but you’re craving cheese steak and fries at ten o’clock at night? Do the exact opposite. Eat healthy and go get yourself some hummus.

Hummus? But—but what is that? What’s in it?

Shut up, you little pussy fart! Put it in your mouth and take a fucking chance!

So what if you look weird? So what if you appear different? Stop acting like it’s a bad thing ’cause truth be told you want to be different. Wanting to be “just like every body else” only happens in the movies, like if you’re a super hero or a sparkling vampire. In real life it’s the opposite. And besides, the opinions of the collective group is poison to your personal development.

Stop, sever and resist!

Modern society has always been obsessed with safety words that guarantee. Words like algorithms, ROI’s, focus groups, opinion polls, political correctness, risk analysis, and online popularity votes all promote bitch-habits. In fact it scares the shit out of everyone from trying things that they just want to sit back, estimate, postulate, speculate, and scientificate. But whatever happened to bold and certain words like faith (not just in the religious sense), or strong and unpredictable words like spirit, intuition, and instinct?

Despite all our technology and “science” (because everything has to be “science”-based nowadays), we’ve forgotten the true meaning of the word—that is, applied science.  Do you know how many tries it took to make the first light bulb to work, or to fly a plane off a cliff, or to fire the first rocket into outer space? Well it took many tries and, most importantly, many errors.

Bottom line is: you can educate yourself as much as you can but there comes a point where you just have to try shit out. It’s just like on a date. At some point one of you just has to whip it out and hope for the best.

Remember having passion in what you do is one thing, but having applied passion is another.

If you really want to quit, quit one thing: stop bitching!

Till the next rant!

—R