100 Rules To Live By

1. A bottle of vodka beside your pet’s water bowl will bring many successful parties to your household.
2. Name all your children after flowers. Daisy, Violet, Susan, Ranunculus (Randy or Ranun for short), Petunia, etc. 
3. No tissues? No problem. A pair of underwear makes a functional and stylish handkerchief. 
4. Your task list is your garden. Each task grows into progress toward your goals.
5. If you are invited as a guest into someone’s home, always bring something freshly-baked. It doesn’t have to taste good. 
6. Kill ants, but let spiders live inside your house. They kill ants too. 
7. You are noisy, and your noise is not original. That is ok. You are still a valuable cell in the skin of humanity, so keep roaring as loudly as something so tiny can. 
8. Like sweets, sex in moderation is a good remedy for boredom.
9. Your family loves you, but sometimes they are too blinded by themselves to express it. Don’t take it personally, or you might become guilty of the same flaw. 
10. Like people, computers are not always nice.
11. Regularly seek out places where you feel small: the ocean, the top of a building, a mountain peak, the night sky. It makes being alive a little easier to be. 
12. If given the choice, always choose electrolyte water. 
13. Make friends based on how they will benefit you financially. This is how people get ahead in this world, via the friendship stock market. 
14. Don’t ever use the word “awesome.” Ever. Not even if you are looking up at the Northern Lights. Not even if you are the first person to walk on Mars. Not even if you are existentially excited in any way. This word always makes you look bad to others. 
15. Clean your carpets often.
16. Don’t hunt animals just to make carpets out of them. 
17. When people say that everyone is equal, they are lying to you and likely to themselves as well. There are hierarchies in all of culture, and breaking those hierarchies will take many years of backbreaking work.
18. Most pursuits are futile. But you must pursue them anyway to prevent yourself from becoming a futile force. 
19. People like to take advantage of each other. Relationships work best when both parties are taking advantage of the other in some way. Don’t try to build relationships purely based on the desire to know another. This will fail and often leave you bleeding. Human beings are Earth’s most intelligent parasite.
20. Write down all of your ideas, even when writing is inconvenient. 
21. Looking at sunsets and rainbows and pretty things does not mean you are basic. 
22. Simplicity seems simple because it is complex. 
23. Enjoy participating in cliches. It means you belong and are functioning well as a person. 
24. Boredom is valuable and increasingly rare.
25. Take good care of your mouth. It has a lot to say. 
26. Your teeth are destroying themselves from the moment they emerge from your gums. Care for your poor dying teeth and be thankful you are alive. 
27. Fingernail polish is terrible for the environment. Embrace your bare fingernails and enjoy the color all around you. 
28. If allergic, you could die when bees sting. You will also die if all bees die. Leave bees alone.
29. Social media is a playground where no one is playing for fun. 
30. It is not a bad thing to grow closer to the Earth instead of joining the space race. 
31. Empathy is a double-edged sword. Use it specifically and know its dangers. 
32. Birthdays can still be fun when you are an adult if you make a rainbow confetti cake and share it with your friends.
33. Never put buttercream on a hot cake. 
34. Making new friends in life is easier if you don’t share much of yourself. People don’t like being challenged, and intimacy is challenging. 
35. Your senses can often predict moment-by-moment weather more accurately than a forecasting service. 
36. Photograph the people who stare at your camera. 
37. We don’t perceive time linearly. If it feels like years are passing by faster than they did before, they probably are. 
38. Try to think in three or more dimensions.
39. The grid can help sometimes, but it is not your friend. 
40. Nobody really cares about grammar. The future of business is typos in every document. 
41. There is no end to wrong things happening. Try not to dwell on that.  
42. You can be better, but there is no such thing as best. Only bested. 
43. Nothing is guaranteed. 
44. If you want to be a cowboy, buy some cowboy boots and move out west. 
45. Wash your hands and cover your mouth when you sneeze.
46. You don’t need to rinse and repeat your shampoo routine. 
47. Remember the toga party. 
48. Pay attention to the things you are doing when you are procrastinating. Try to do those things more without giving into the temptation to monetize them. 
49. A lifetime of seeking riches is a lifelong curse. 
50. Always question how you value yourself. 
51. Question what you romanticize in your mind’s narrative. 
52. You are not a machine. You don’t want to be. 
53. Don’t store your bicycle outside. 
54. Don’t store your hard candy outside.
55. Don’t store your ambitions outside. 
56. Don’t store your heart in your sleeve. 
57. Don’t wipe your nose with your sleeve either. 
58. Prey attracts the predator. 
59. When you choose to adopt a pet, remember that you are committing to eventual sorrow. 
60. Your capacity to feel sorrow is the same capacity you have to feel other emotions, like joy.
61. When sad, commiserate, precipitate, but don’t ruminate.
62. If fortune is a wheel, what goes around comes around. 
63. You can’t push a rope. 
64. To be is to shout in a crowded room where others are shouting.
65. It is possible to be invisible. Simply stop shouting. 
66. Don’t fret if you kill a houseplant. Give thanks for the sustaining power of flora and eat a salad. Then buy another houseplant. 
67. Things are smaller than they seem. 
68. Cry about wolves. 
69. Culture will tell you that it’s noble to be the face of something great. But you may be more of a facilitator. And the something you facilitate may be more mediocre than great. And accepting this will be among the hardest challenges you face in life. 
70. In the act of art-making, the materials used are a status symbol. Many artists will deny this, but it’s the truth beneath the mirage of brilliant colors and poisons. 
71. Microwave popcorn will never yield 100% popped kernels. 
72. When you want to create something from nothing, be a caveman. 
73. If you prefer the minimal aesthetic, be a minimalist. But if you are a magpie, embrace yourself as a maximalist. Neither is correct. 
74. Early birds are not better than night owls. There is ample food in the morning for the early birds and ample food at night for the night owls. Owls don’t like morning bird food, and morning birds don’t like owl food. Culture will like one more than it likes the other, but that does not mean there is any real hierarchy in the behavior or function. 
75. There are alternatives to being among the profit-driven profit-production hordes if you believe like a tween choosing to believe in Santa Claus.
76. Read poetry, even if you don’t enjoy it. Sometimes necessary medicine tastes bitter. 
77. Kill what you think “culture” is. 
78. Sometimes you ask for a lathe but only receive a pencil sharpener. 
79. If you are curious, be so unapologetically.  
80. Wake up hungry but don’t overeat. 
81. Being obsessed with a passion is unhealthy, even if that obsession brings you great rewards. 
82. In many games, whoever cares less wins.
83. Be skeptical of the idea that being skeptical is cool.
84. Bugs and insects will tell you about the state of your environment. 
85. If someone looks like a duck on the internet, they probably are not a duck. 
86. Context is critical. Image isn’t.
87. If you think about the big picture too much, it will be easy to talk yourself out of participating in everything. 
88. Most fears in life are imaginary.
89. If you need a good sob story, chop some onions. 
90. Counter existential angst with a question. “So what?”
91. Pay close attention when they find a teddy bear on Mars. 
92. Knocking on wood can hide the truth.
93. It takes a touch of hubris to be noticed. Beware if you are humble with an aim for fame. 
94. Be discriminating with your attention. 
95. It’s difficult to finish the things you start. 
96. You may never become what you strive to become. There is much beyond your control, but don’t be afraid or discouraged. Being present in striving is more enjoyable than being stuck in a possibility of the future. 
97. Your dreams are more interesting to you than anyone else. 
98. People who tell you to “find your community” tend to belong to something opaque and know it.
99. Drink two liters of water every day.
100. Don’t give up.