How To Be A 30-Something

Remain at a desk job for one decade and calculate, if one gains 17 lbs., how many pounds a year that is. Remove 5 random documents from a folder and cathartically put them in the shredder. Instead of emailing your supervisor to set up that meeting in which you ask for a raise, if only to cover the rate of inflation, apply expired chap stick. Silence your phone when your mother calls.

Expect cake. Somebody will be retiring, or maybe it’s their god damn birthday, or some lost soul just got engaged. When you receive a company-wide email about the celebration, get off your ass and walk over to the break area. Your “corporate casual” khakis might feel somewhat tight, so feel free to undo the button. Feel mild disgust as the thick frosting coats your lips. Swallow, you fat cow.

Try to get a mortgage at Washington Mutual, a Dell laptop at Best Buy, and a fucking clue in Tao Te Ching, which you had purchased at Amazon out of some misguided idea that something written fifteen centuries ago might apply to you. Consider getting an iguana at PetCo and fantasize about it eating you alive while you’re zonked out on NyQuil and melatonin.

Come home after work and sort through junk mail, nervously looking for bills, notices from the government, and wedding invitations. Call out the lord’s name when you receive a wedding invitation from your younger cousin for which you must travel across the world to a very humid area, at whose reception you must wear a suit, despite the humidity.

Turn on Pandora and earnestly contemplate suicide when it believes that you might enjoy Macklemore. Pour and immediately drink a glass of bourbon, chased by a dollop of aioli. Sarcastically “act white” to Macklemore by waving your arms without rhythm and sadly realize this is the best part of your day. Now go to the bathroom and take a dump so large that you cautiously Google “local plumber” on your phone while taking it.

Your spouse comes home, having likewise gained 17 lbs. Their face looks swollen and, from a distance, hoglike. Defend yourself to accusations that you didn’t take the dishes out of the dishwasher because they were still dirty. Silence Macklemore, as this has elevated into a full blown argument about your lack of commitment to the relationship, which you passive-aggressively abruptly end by saying look, you’re just really hungry and can someone heat up some canned soup because someone forgot to do the groceries?

Watch The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, trying not to think about his salary, while folding laundry, if only to make the basket available for the new pile of dirty clothes. Ask the lord our savior what the fuck happened to your socks, like why none of them match, like is He some kind of sick asshole who enjoys omnipresently seeing his creation toil in absurdity?

When, after the cordial but ultimately hurt silence in the wake of your argument, your spouse retreats to the bathroom, block out in your mind the enormous crap they are likely taking and open two tabs; in one, preemptively google “local plumber,” having your phone and checkbook ready; in the other, open your favorite pornography website and search for Asians.