How To Ruin Your Life In 10 Easy Steps

"Date a person who doesn’t care about you."

Updated 8 years ago, November 5, 2016

Illustration by Daniella Urdinlaiz / lookcatalog

This is for people of all age groups. I promise I haven’t excluded even one soul. I have enough parenting experience in case you need an advice from an expert as I did a major part of raising myself because my parents were too busy ruining their respective lives as well as each other’s lives.

1. Don’t ever go to school for conceptual learning.

Study because your parents forced you to attend school. Study because your peers and parents pressured you to excel at every course you took. Study because you want to get into your dream university which has acceptance rate equivalent to the chances that the States will be a better place if Trump wins the presidential election. Study because you’ll have to be embarrassed if your friends get into your dream university and you don’t. Study because you’ll never be a billionaire if you don’t get into the right undergrad school to get the right job.

2. Repeat the above advice when you’re pursuing your university degree.

Study because a GPA of 4.00 is the only metric to measure your intelligence. Study because your grades define you. Study because you want to become the most influential person or the richest person or *insert the label that defines your dream in the most superficial way* straight out of college. Stop studying because the above seems impossible now. Stop studying because getting the attention from that one person who never cares about you is more important than your education. Stop studying because you think you’re not smart enough.

3. Date a person who doesn’t care about you.

Date that person because you are immune to getting treated like crap and you don’t deserve love and care. Date that person because you can’t remain single for a long time. Date that person because all your friends are dating and one of them tried to fix you up with this jerk. Date that person because you want to kill time and eventually yourself.

4. Get a job that you barely care about.

Work because the company pays you well. Work because you can use the title of your position and the name of the company to brag to your friends and family whenever you meet them. Work because the company has a cool open office environment. Work because you have no other option as you didn’t pay enough attention to your academics and extracurricular activities when at college.

5. Don’t ever dare to change something that’s bothering you.

Don’t change anything because you deserve the mess that you are in now. And please don’t change anything that’s bothering you because change is only for the brave and you can always use clichés like ‘it is easier said than done’ in your defense. Don’t change because you’ll have nothing to crib about if you change and self-pity is your all-time favorite weapon.

6. Don’t get married to the person you’ll love to grow old with. Instead, marry the wrong person.

Marry the wrong person because all your friends are getting married and you have to get married to the person you’re dating now because you’ve invested a lot of time in that relationship and you think you’re 60 years old. Marry the wrong person because your family forced you to get married and you gave in to their unreasonable demands. Marry because the society wants you to get married. Marry because you want children and child-adoption or other advanced options don’t exist. Marry because you’re scared of dying alone or being lonely. Marry the wrong person because you wasted your time hooking up with people and never took any relationship seriously when the time was right.

7. Stay in an unhappy marriage (or relationship).

Stay in an unhappy marriage because you’re extremely scared of losing everything that destroys you from the inside. Stay in an unhappy marriage because you gave one person the power to destroy your definition of love and marriage. Stay in an unhappy marriage because you think you don’t deserve or can’t find a better partner. Stay in an unhappy marriage because you never want to liberate yourself from a bad relationship.

8. Live by the terms and conditions of others.

Do so because it’s not your life. Do so because it’s so easy to follow the norm without questioning it. Do so because you want to wind up as a mess. Do so because you’ll eventually feel helpless because you have no control over the decisions that you make. Live by the terms and conditions of others because you think you’re not efficient enough to make your own choices.

9. Always remain unhappy and unappreciative of your life.

Try this because there’s always a next day where the chances of being happy will miraculously increase. Am I right? Try this because you want to give yourself the opportunity to hate yourself when you’re counting your last days.