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Without knowing how to properly allocate my income, I often find myself spending a lot of money on shampoo and then suddenly find myself without power, running water, or any form of insurance whatsoever.

How am I supposed to know how much money I’m supposed to spend on different things? Walgreens has 28 different types of shampoo, and I need them all for my hair to smell nice! Car insurance does not in any way make my hair smell nice!

I need to hire a financial advisor, unless that’s not what a financial advisor does. Now I will need money to pay someone to tell me what a financial advisor does. And eventually I will need someone to tell me where I can find a financial advisor-advisor.

Anytime I come across something I think I need, I spend money on it. If I can’t see it (insurance, car payments, psychic hotlines), it’s a lot more difficult for me to justify payments. I need instant gratification. I don’t even like ordering takeout or going to the grocery store. I want to pay for food and immediately eat the food. I’m not going to pay for something and then wait to make it myself. I’ve come too far in life to remember how to make something from other things.

So, as my life progresses and I begin to take on new responsibilities, I really need to know how to spend my money more wisely. When I was little, I had a plan to save all of my money once I got an adult job and wear really trashy clothes and eat really cheap food until I had enough money to buy a tuxedo. Basically, the tuxedo was the ultimate sign of success. I still do not have a tuxedo. I have so far to go.

One great indicator that my life is finally on the right track is actually very subtle. It’s something that is difficult to pick up on at first glance, but after years of not caring about my appearance, having low self-esteem, and weighing about 100 pounds more than I should, I’ve been able to notice the indirect ways that people react to me.

A few years ago, when my life was out of control, people were still nice to me. I was still awesome. I was really nice and funny and had a pretty good personality, so people weren’t really mean to me. However, I would still get The Look. That brief glance that was about 90% pity and 10% aversion. I was still pretty good at talking to women, but if I ended up talking for too long, or went off on a tangent, or got too close, I would end up getting the look, meaning, ‘alright you’re pretty nice, but I’ve reached my quota for you and do not want to look at your fat, sweaty face anymore.’ I eventually was pretty aware that the look was eminent, and once it arrived, I was already gone.

I think I need to revise the last paragraph. I was not good at talking to women. I could maintain a conversation for about five minutes. In my mind, these five minutes were going great, when in actuality, I was flailing my arms, screaming, and had really yellow teeth, which has nothing to do with my conversation style, but didn’t help, either. After five minutes I would either just stare at her nervously or walk away.

Now I still get the look, but it’s completely different, because I’m awesome now. People aren’t disgusted by me anymore. When I smile at a stranger and say, ‘hi’, they don’t squint their eyes and immediately start walking in the opposite direction despite the fact that they’re already five minutes late to see their dying grandmother. They smile and say, ‘hi’ back like I’m a goddamn normal person.

This isn’t just due to my weight loss. It’s a complete lifestyle and partial personality change. My mannerisms are even quite different. Of course, it is far better to be unique and not conform to what people respond favorably too. However, I am too weak-minded to not conform. I must be liked.

Growing up, I used to love watching trashy daytime talk shows. I missed most of 9th grade pretending to be sick so that I could watch as much Jerry Springer as possible. I couldn’t put my finger on why I liked it so much, other than how unbelievably awesome it was. Then I realized, it wasn’t the fighting, or the outrageous storylines, or even Jerry’s Final Thought.  I loved seeing people worse off than me. No matter how bad a day I was having, or how bad I thought my life was going, at least I wasn’t a middle-aged overweight man convinced that I was a dog for the entertainment of a masochistic, older, sex-crazed woman.

It may sound bad, but it’s somewhat therapeutic knowing that there are those worse off than you. I think the word for this is ‘schadenfreude’. There’s a limit, however. I don’t enjoy watching people suffer or die, and I do not like when anyone I love or care about is in pain. Aside from that, pretty much anything goes. I like it when I’m driving down the highway and I see that a police car has just pulled over another car for speeding. I like it when I see another couple yelling at each other. I like it when I get the last cookie at the deli in my office. We all need some motivation and self-assurance in the fact that we are not the most miserable people on earth.

After many failed dates and rejections, I needed a confidence booster in that same vein. I thought about showing interest in women that I wasn’t interested at all, just so I could receive some sort of acceptance from someone. However, I figured that this was too cruel, especially knowing how painful rejection can be. Instead, I gained a little bit of confidence knowing that even though the women I sort of had interest in didn’t reciprocate the feeling, a few that I didn’t have interest in at least seemed to enjoy my company. And then I hit the jackpot. I won $10 from a scratch-off lottery ticket. And then I redeemed my jackpot. And then I bought a sandwich. And then I hit the metaphorical jackpot and met the woman I will spend the rest of my life with.

There’s no real lesson here, and most of my ‘lessons’ are impractical and may even get you killed.

How important are a man’s looks to the opposite sex? We will never know for sure, and women will probably never fully know either, because looks are just part of the whole package.

Some women say they are only interested in personality, and do not care at all if you are ugly and fat. If this were completely true, however, they would date exclusively ugly, fat guys because ugly, fat guys are almost always awesome and almost always have the best personalities. Have you ever met an fat and ugly guy that’s just a total asshole? Maybe, but there’s not a whole lot of them. They don’t care about anything and act based on impulses. This is a blanket statement, and, for example, obesity is not just caused by overeating and the result of a lifestyle without limits. I’m just basing this off of the past ten years of my own life when I was a big, huge fat guy. I was great, and if women were only interested in personality, I would have been married exactly six times by now.

Women as a people are not superficial. However, they are people. The same goes for men. Even the best people are genetically inclined to be drawn to attractive people. It’s a combination of primal instinct and a learned mental response due to a lifetime of conceptions and misconceptions about beauty. Nevertheless, we all now have to make ourselves as attractive as possible. Wouldn’t you love to walk into a bar and just see a bunch of fat, happy people all excited to see you and giving you drinks? If you walk into a bar, you will probably instead see a lot of people talking amongst themselves, wearing a lot of product and sweater vests. I actually love sweater vests. It’s all of the horrible ugliness of a sweater combined with the lack of the one redeeming quality of a sweater: warmth. You’ll see a few fat, happy people, but everyone else is trying to ignore and avoid them. Even their friends want them to leave because they think they’re repelling women, when actually the friends themselves are doing this with their sweater vests… and their product… and their penny loafers without socks.

Murphy’s Law states something like if something bad will happen, it will, or something like that. I’m not really sure, because if I look it up, it will depress me more. I don’t know who came up with it (I’m assuming Murphy) or the rationalization/science behind it, but from what I’ve experienced, it only comes true if you believe that it will come true.

If you think that you will never find someone, you won’t. If you believe that not buying rental car insurance is going to cause you a lot of pain, it will. If you don’t look at the expiration date of that gallon of milk, you will die. If you have no expectations, then nothing will let you down. I’m not telling you to always be optimistic, because that would be ridiculous. You would always be disappointed. Also, you should obviously not always be pessimistic, or else you won’t make it through your day. I’m telling you, that in most situations, have no expectations. See what life comes up with for you. Whenever you make plans, you’re setting yourself up for either disappointment or severe disappointment.

Blind dates are a perfect example of this. Don’t go expecting defeat, because you will then be defeated. Also, don’t go in expecting marriage, because you will then also be defeated. Go in expecting to have a beer and some food with a nice lady, because that is exactly what will happen. There is usually no such thing as instant gratification. Everything good takes time. Treat a date as an extension of your life. It’s not a gamble where you have to put all of your chips (or money) into one event. Win or lose, it’s just another night of your life. I used to take every date to heart. Everything was calculated. If I didn’t like her, I was disappointed, and if she didn’t like me, I was devastated. That is no way to live life.

You are going to eventually die. That is the only concrete thing that you should expect. What happens before then is due to a lot of factors, the least of which are what you think will actually happen. The only exception is if you’re President of the United States. If you are this person, you have been planning that shit for a very long time. However, thousands of other people also planned to be this person, but failed, and will probably never be. Obviously, a lot of other people have also worked hard towards goals and eventually achieved them. I’m sort of lost and am contradicting myself now, but just don’t give yourself unrealistic expectations, okay?

Almost nothing in life, outside of actual human affection, makes me happier than a big bucket of chicken. Since I started my diet over a year-and-a-half ago, I have not had one big bucket of chicken. I still struggle with bouts of anxiety and depression, but whenever I see a KFC commercial, I am fleetingly and overwhelmingly happy for about 30 seconds. I need to either eat a big bucket of chicken at least once a week, or watch like an extended hour long KFC commercial every night.

I’m still able to satisfy my food cravings weekly, as I typically go off my strict diet on weekends and special occasions. Big buckets of chicken always seem too decadent, though. Also, the closest KFC is at least 20 miles away. By the time I bring it home it will be all soggy. I guess I’ve associated KFC with fat Jeremy and not KFC with skinny Jeremy, but damn, I need a big bucket of chicken right now. I am not forgetting about the sides. I’ll be damned if I’m going to eat a big bucket of chicken without mashed potatoes and coleslaw.

Back in college, my friend and I would get a big bucket of chicken, a 24 pack of Red Stripe, and watch a marathon of The X-Files every Thursday night. By about 10 pm I would feel miserably full, drunk, and would become unreasonably upset that Scully wouldn’t believe Mulder at the beginning of every episode, yet he always proved that he was right by the end.

I usually try to connect my inane post to something with a deeper meaning, but I just want chicken. KFC is one of the biggest fast food chains in the world. Maybe you can open within Houston city limits. There’s like eight million Popeyes within a quarter mile radius of my house. Somebody please explain this to me.

Dating my girlfriend is so much easier than dating single.

Okay, first I want to make a disclaimer that all of you will hate this post, outside of the fact that a lot of you hate my posts anyway, because I’m writing about my girlfriend. However, after being single almost my entire life, outside of a short stint at hookup sleepaway camp and dating a few other horrible people, I no longer care.

Anyway, dating your girlfriend is so much more pleasant and bearable than going out with strangers. I am a 100hookup success story, and though it has often been frustrating, which was mostly the fault of my own personality, I stuck with it for a long time, and all of those people I had previously hated that told me to not give up I hate slightly less now. Roughly five years of rejection, incompatibility, and lethargy did pay off in a big way.

I first signed up for 100hookup roughly five years ago, when, probably like many of you, my mother offered to pay for my account. I was new to online dating and was amazed that I could browse many women in my area, and was equally amazed by how little I knew about dating/the human condition. I was pretty proactive at first, but after years, I slowed down. I got to the point where I would get about one message a month from a woman, and we would go out, and it was usually okay, but would never see each other again.

Now, I’m in a wonderful relationship, and dating somebody consistently is so much better. If you’re out there in the 100hookup world, and are starting to lose hope, the best advice I could offer would be to not give up. I completely understand slowing down. Perhaps maybe you should not browse 100hookup nightly. This could come off as desperate while also increasing desperation within yourself. I’ve said this before, but take a step back. However, stay somewhat active. Browse peoples’ profiles, but do it in a more thorough way. Read their entire profiles this time. Don’t just rush through reading it to feel better about yourself. Don’t just send out mass messages in a one-night frenzy that you know in the bottom of your heart will not result in anything. Look for things that may pique your interest, or at least things that the two of you may have in common. I know this sounds obvious, and this may partly be due to the fact that I’m writing this while sick, but the way you act on 100hookup should reflect the way you act in the real world. You wouldn’t just run up to every women in a bar, one after the other, and scream, ‘Hi! You’re hot!’, and if you would, I really want to meet you.

Thinking always gets me in trouble. Well in my case, I tend to hark on the little things that often do not matter. I think about the fact that I forgot to bring my wallet out of the house, so I forget that I’m driving, and then get pulled over for speeding, and ironically cannot produce my driver license that lives in my wallet. Then I go to jail, not because I didn’t have my ID, but because I was going 140 mph in a school zone. In jail, I still can’t stop thinking about my wallet, which would have been confiscated at this point anyway. I can’t eat any of my crappy jail meals, and can’t focus enough to lift weights and exercise like a proper inmate. I become malnourished and skinny and rot away in my cell, too afraid to go to sleep because of what my cellmate may do to me, but too weak to move or stay awake.

It is for this exact reason that I never leave my home without my wallet. A few years ago, after seeing a therapist regularly, she decided that it was a good idea for me to leave notes for myself to remind myself to do things, so I don’t overthink things later when I forget. My sister made me a note on the inside of my bedroom door that read, ‘Don’t forget your: wallet, keys, cell phone. Happy face.’ I have lived by that note. I check my pockets for all three of those items about every five minutes. Sometimes I catch myself doing it in the shower, or when waking up in the morning.

The absolute worst part of obsessing is being burdened by these obsessions while out on a date or with a girlfriend. It eats away at you, or at least, me. I can’t focus and just want to go back to my car to make sure I locked it, or go to the bathroom to make sure that I completely shaved the right side of my face, while simultaneously trying to convey how much I like her. How can I show her I like her if half of my face is unshaven? That would just come off as insincere.

There is a thin line between modesty and self-effacement. I live on that line. I honestly don’t know if it’s because I just have a generally low self-esteem, or because that’s just become a part of my personality because I have tried to create the illusion of friendliness or am actually friendly. In any case, I am a generally modest person. Whenever I say something modest, I think to myself how humble I may sound saying it, when in actuality, I may just sound pathetic.

There are only so many things you can say you suck at until a woman believes that you were not meant to be on this earth. Through my gradual lifestyle overhaul over the past couple of years, I have learned to refine my modesty into borderline self-contentment. Women don’t like men they can feel sorry for. They like friends they can feel sorry for. They like men they can respect. Though modesty often wins over arrogance, nobody likes being in a relationship with a community service project, unless that is their community service project.

There’s an art to drawing attention to yourself without drawing attention to yourself. Of course, I do not know this art at all. I can either make a complete ass of myself, or I can make myself out to be the quietest, weakest person in the room. However, I have learned through self-imposed personality reassignment that I can infuse my instinctual modesty with some dignity. I still display my signature horrible self-conscious shrugs and face scratching, but often don’t accompany that with detailed stories about the genesis of my back hair or tales of my immeasurable sadness.

Having a wonderful girlfriend certainly helps with my modesty issues, but I wasn’t able to get her to like me if I wasn’t already on this path to pride. I now know that the only reason that I lost all of that weight and changed my life around was so that I could find her. That is cheesy. I don’t care.

Over the past year-and-a-half, I have drastically altered my life. The most aesthetically noticeable aspect is my weight loss, as I have lost over eighty pounds. However, while I was fat, and during this entire process, I felt that someone or something celestial was working against me. Every time I hit a milestone, I seemed to face an equal and opposite force working against me.

Over the past few months, I’ve started jogging regularly. It’s really helped me feel better about myself, because, as a fat man, I could jog for about one minute before collapsing in a very public way on my treadmill that seemed to be struggling equally as hard to support me. Over the past month or so, my hip started hurting increasingly more every time I jogged or ran. I tend to ignore things I don’t like, so I pretended that none of this was happening. I went limping into work every day, and when people asked why I was limping, I told them that this was always how I walked, and then immediately collapsed. I thought nothing of it until, finally, after one workout, I couldn’t walk or lift my left leg for about twenty minutes. I went to the doctor soon after and was diagnosed with hip dysplasia. This means that, barring major surgery, I can never jog or run again, and will develop arthritis by the time I’m in my 50’s.

Now, this is really not bothering me that much. My OCD and anxiety tend to focus on little things that don’t matter at all. This is nothing. I have bigger things to worry about, like what position my towel is in when I hang it over the shower and violently jerking my head for no reason every time I think I’m developing a headache.

However, this is just another thing that seems to be working against my progress. It’s going to be hard to maintain my current weight without cardio. I know I could swim, but it’s getting cold outside, and even when using indoor pools, I dislike taking off my shirt in public. Also, I know I could ride bikes (stationary or real), but I don’t want to do that because I dislike doing that. Maybe I’ll try something like tapeworms or the Limb Whacker®.