Baby steps.
1. When people give a shit about their zodiac signs and treat them as if they’re any type of predictor of romantic behavior.
Of course, this doesn’t mean I’m going to start giving a shit about zodiac signs—I’m a Capricorn, by the way, just in case you’re one of those people who give a shit—but I will attempt to stop being annoyed at people who do give shits.
2. Line dancing.
Admittedly, my annoyance with line dancing is at least partially due to the fact that I don’t know how to do any and I refuse to learn because it just doesn’t look fun or interesting. Which makes me wonder if I’m annoyed because I never learned how to do any or if I never learned how to do any because they’ve always annoyed me. Either way, I can’t be too mad at something that apparently brings so many people joy. Unless it’s gentrification.
3. Other people’s typos on Twitter and Facebook.
I’m already annoyed enough by the memories of status messages and/or tweets where I didn’t quite articulate myself the way I wanted to—or even worse, when I think of a better status message and/or tweet 15 minutes after I’ve already published it—so there just isn’t that much space to be annoyed by other people’s mistakes.
4. People who drive the speed limit.
Just can’t justify being mad at people for doing exactly what they’ve been ordered by law to do even if their adherence to draconian limits on how fast we’re legally required to drive means that, since I’m stuck behind them, I’m going to miss the first three minutes of Black Ink.
5. People who have very public displays of affection for their pets.
Because I just can’t be the guy who makes a mental barf sign whenever I see someone French-kiss a shih tzu when I’m the same guy who was fine with people fucking on his house.
6. The fact that Whole Foods has, like, 17,000 different options for trash.
It bothers me because it gives me anxiety because I always feel like I’m making the wrong choice, which then makes me mad because WHY SHOULD TRASH BE THIS HARD? But I recognize that it’s an effort to save the world and shit, so I’ll deal with the panic attacks it induces for the greater good.
7. When people leave comments on articles and blogs and status messages where they claim that they don’t care about the subject being discussed even though the fact that they’re leaving a comment proves that they care at least enough to comment.
I know that this is just their dumbass and performative way of expressing displeasure with either the topic or the angle taken on the topic—which is fine ... sometimes—so I’m going to pledge to try very, very, very hard to stop taking “I don’t care” so literally.
(Admittedly, I’m not confident that I will be able to do this, but I will try.)
8. The fact that I can’t dunk a basketball anymore.
Related: the fact that I didn’t have the foresight to realize that my last dunk would be my last dunk because I would have hired a full camera crew to watch me hoop that day.
9. People in line at places like Panera Bread who get to the register and still don’t know what they want to order despite the fact that the menu is big as shit and sitting right above the register and they’ve had more than enough time to look at it and it never changes except for those rare times they’re offering Halloween chili or whatever the fuck.
Mainly because I sometimes end up spending so much effort in line irritated by them that by the time it’s my turn to order, I need to take extra time because I was too busy being irritated to think about soups, creating an endless loop of soup-related irritation. I need more time, in 2018, to think about soups.