How should I change my life?

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As some of you know, Lisa & I are moving out to the other coast in a month or so. I'm thinking it might be a good idea to reinvent myself in various other ways, too, while I'm at it. This is the thread where you suggest appearance/personality/lifestyle makeovers for me.

― Douglas (Douglas), Thursday, 18 September 2003 01:57 (twenty-two years ago)

either grow your hair long or shave it off depending on what it's like now

― the surface noise (electricsound), Thursday, 18 September 2003 02:04 (twenty-two years ago)

change your usual beverages

― the surface noise (electricsound), Thursday, 18 September 2003 02:04 (twenty-two years ago)

Figure out what kind of person does the things you want to do and does them well, and be them.

(Incredibly New Agey and Tony Robbinsish, but it's what I did.)

― Tep (ktepi), Thursday, 18 September 2003 02:05 (twenty-two years ago)

give all your possesions away and live under a bo tree.

― gabbo giftington (dubplatestyle), Thursday, 18 September 2003 02:16 (twenty-two years ago)

Toss out all of your old records and clothes. Buy new ones. Then you'll magically be a brand new you. Should cut down on transport costs.

Oh wait, I'm not serious...

― mouse, Thursday, 18 September 2003 02:16 (twenty-two years ago)

(N.B.: Do be careful with any drastic alterations for the sake of altering yourself. This is a good way to give yourself an identity crises. Or so I've found)

― mouse, Thursday, 18 September 2003 02:17 (twenty-two years ago)

Arrogance is the new humility, Douglas. Wear it proudly.

― Colin Meeder (Mert), Thursday, 18 September 2003 02:24 (twenty-two years ago)

Forget all that other advice. You don't want to listen to a bunch of people tell you how to live your life, do you? No! You want to listen to me tell you how to live your life. I am not "a bunch of people." I am a carefully crafted amalgam of a highly elite bunch of people.

First, your sleeping habits are all wrong. You sleep the wrong amount, at the wrong hours, in the wrong places, for the wrong reasons. Starting today you shall begin a new regimen, enabling you to sleep as irregularly as humanly possible. How? Drugs! Of every kind and description.

But, Aimless... where shall I get these wonderful "drugs", I hear you asking. Simple. It is all a part of your newly-forged identity as a small time drug dealer and club-going bon vivant. From this day forward you shall buy drugs in quantity and consume them in quantity. Your very pores shall ooze drugs, so that dissipated youth, old before their time, shall pay you good money just to lick your forearms. Which ones? Why should you care!

There's much, much more in store for you if you follow my exciting advice -- gold chains, bare chests, busty women in bathing suits -- but I haven't time this instant to write it all down for you. I'm wanted in the Jacuzzi!

― Aimless, Thursday, 18 September 2003 03:51 (twenty-two years ago)

amputate a leg

― A Nairn (moretap), Thursday, 18 September 2003 04:08 (twenty-two years ago)

are you serious? how can you "reinvent" yourself? aren't you are who you are?

― A Girl Named Sam (thatgirl), Thursday, 18 September 2003 04:12 (twenty-two years ago)

Not totally serious, Sam--it's mostly a silly thread--but the move IS an opportunity to get out of some ruts, inc. maybe some I'm not even aware of. And I figured something useful might come out of the silliness.

― Douglas (Douglas), Thursday, 18 September 2003 04:32 (twenty-two years ago)

Douglas! Glad to hear it. Is it Portland?

― donut bitch (donut), Thursday, 18 September 2003 05:03 (twenty-two years ago)

But of course. Unless we find someplace else we like better first.

― Douglas (Douglas), Thursday, 18 September 2003 09:15 (twenty-two years ago)

reinventing the wolk...

― Dave Stelfox (Dave Stelfox), Thursday, 18 September 2003 10:22 (twenty-two years ago)

Figure out what kind of person does the things you want to do and does them well, and be them.
(Incredibly New Agey and Tony Robbinsish, but it's what I did.)

-- Tep (te...), September 18th, 2003.

Tep, I love you.

― Nick Southall (Nick Southall), Thursday, 18 September 2003 10:46 (twenty-two years ago)

Before you can love me, Brother Nick, you needs must love yourself. Give yourself a hug. It's okay. No one's looking.

(And Sam, if that were true across the line, alcoholics would never give up drinking, and no one would ever change religions. People just have differing views of where the radio ends and the dashboard begins.)

― Tep (ktepi), Thursday, 18 September 2003 11:07 (twenty-two years ago)

I already do love myself!

That sentiment is one I've been espousing for a long time, and people always think I'm mad.

― Nick Southall (Nick Southall), Thursday, 18 September 2003 11:19 (twenty-two years ago)

It's hard to say it without sounding ... off, or pompous, or like you actually mean "be like me."

Please don't anyone be like me. It would only be confusing.

― Tep (ktepi), Thursday, 18 September 2003 11:22 (twenty-two years ago)

but the accepted wisdom is that alcoholics are never not alcoholics. when you give up you are said to be recovering, but how can you be when you're never going to be free of it? this has always struck me as being like taking starting a journey to nowhere that you know you'll never finish. i'd argue that people don't reinvent themselves at all, they just hold certain aspects in check/emphasise other characteristics/allow certain facets of personality to be subsumed by others. these can change, but you are still fundamentally who you were. this is especially apparent among 12-step cultists; a freakier bunch i have never come across than when i went to an AA meeting with a friend who had a serious problem a couple of years back - you could see it all in those vacant, glazed co-dependent stares, they were still addicts, just no longer to booze.

― Dave Stelfox (Dave Stelfox), Thursday, 18 September 2003 11:31 (twenty-two years ago)

and whoah, that was a bit heavy, but i guess the baseline point is that i agree with both of you in a way. < / fence-sitting >
you are who you are but that's no bar to being a better/happier/slightly different person; it's just about making a few changes or approaching things differently. sure this isn't what douglas meant at all, but you can blame tep!

― Dave Stelfox (Dave Stelfox), Thursday, 18 September 2003 11:47 (twenty-two years ago)

I read "< / fence-sitting>" as "< / face sitting>".

― NA (Nick A.), Thursday, 18 September 2003 12:05 (twenty-two years ago)

that's something i've never even started

― Dave Stelfox (Dave Stelfox), Thursday, 18 September 2003 12:08 (twenty-two years ago)

Aw, losing another New Yorker, will we get to see you before you leave, Douglas? Maybe some sort of L.I.C. meet?

― Mary (Mary), Thursday, 18 September 2003 12:11 (twenty-two years ago)

Before we go away, our band the Oblique Strategies is going to play, uh, somewhere. (Anybody got a space that needs a band sometime in the second week of October?)

― Douglas (Douglas), Thursday, 18 September 2003 15:21 (twenty-two years ago)

Alcoholism wasn't the best example, but I was on my way out the door :) (That said, two of my friends have worked as drug and alcohol abuse counselors, and I'm not sure the accepted wisdom is all that widely accepted anymore. It might still be wisdom.)

Look at it this way:

Put me in a typical kitchen, give me a bottle of wine and a chicken every day for two weeks, and I can make you twenty-eight different meals. The chicken and the wine are immutable, but they aren't static, nor must they dominate the meal if I choose to underplay or overlay them. Maybe there's some Tabasco in the cabinet, and maybe I use it or maybe I don't; maybe I baste, maybe I deep-fry, maybe I glaze and maybe I boil.

Even given a set of fixed traits, even given a finite set of possible traits, people are not meals so much as they are collections of ingredients.

― Tep (ktepi), Friday, 19 September 2003 01:00 (twenty-two years ago)

(... yes, I'm just home and it's dinner time, why do you ask?

Actually, using a cooking metaphor is a pretty apt watermark of the way I think.)

― Tep (ktepi), Friday, 19 September 2003 01:01 (twenty-two years ago)

Whoo! I smeel a Portland FAP in the near future!

Best way to change when moving to Portland: Buy a hoodie, learn to love it.

― Chris P (Chris P), Friday, 19 September 2003 03:11 (twenty-two years ago)

Find alternatives to social concensus, conventional values on wealth, social status, beauty etc.
recontextualize in unusual ways: live in a car, put perfume on your feets instead of your head so it will rise to your nose instead of vanishing in the air right away (It's a reference to Diogenes: he was living in a solar-powered VW camper van).

― Sébastien Chikara (Sébastien Chikara), Friday, 19 September 2003 13:09 (twenty-two years ago)

Moving out of NYC will change your life dramatically just because of the transportation issues.

― teeny (teeny), Friday, 19 September 2003 13:31 (twenty-two years ago)

change your name

― Annouschka Magnatech (Jody Beth Rosen), Friday, 19 September 2003 23:18 (twenty-two years ago)

I'd second that, yeah.

― Tep (ktepi), Friday, 19 September 2003 23:33 (twenty-two years ago)

Plastic surgery. Plus quitting drinking cognac in the morning. And starting working for a secret service. Should facilitate a change both on the outside and inside.

― t\'\'t (t\'\'t), Saturday, 20 September 2003 00:28 (twenty-two years ago)

I've read that there are cultures in which it is considered good, somehow, for some reason, to get into the habit of drinking your own urine on a daily basis. And I have thought that, if nothing else, such a practice might so radically change my self-image that other changes might ensue. I'll leave the house and at some point in the course of the day I'll think, "I am a man who drinks his own urine ..." and suddenly I'll have a slew of epiphanies that will lead me to hitherto unimagined heights of productivity and usefulness.

Something to think about, anyway. If not actually do.

― ScottRC (ScottRC), Saturday, 20 September 2003 03:06 (twenty-two years ago)

Completely strike the word "like" from your vocubulary unless you're using it in its proper conext. Refrain from conventional curse words --- anyone can use and abuse those. Seek out bold, new and innovative ways to express your frustration and ire. People will remember you for it.

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Saturday, 20 September 2003 03:33 (twenty-two years ago)

"Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible without surrender be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the dull and the ignorant, they too have their story. Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexations to the spirit..."

Or should this go on the (it's a good thing) thread?

― nickn (nickn), Saturday, 20 September 2003 07:15 (twenty-two years ago)

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