Attempting Normal

by Marc Maron

This is who I am: I overthink and I ruminate. I’m obsessive. But what I really want is relief. Most people are the same. We’re all carrying around some shit. When you hear the things that people have gone through and realize you’ve gone through the same, it provides an amazing amount of relief. It gives us hope. And I think that’s what we’re supposed to get from each other. The hope that, maybe, just maybe, we’re going to be okay. Maybe.

We all have the right to cherry-pick the advice given us in order to do exactly what we wanted to do in the first place.

He’s a biased historian of self, an emotional revisionist. We all are, for the most part.

That’s the big challenge of life—to chisel disappointment into wisdom so people respect you and you don’t annoy your friends with your whining. You don’t want to be the bitter guy in the group. It’s the difference between “I’ve been through that and this is what I’ve learned” and “I’m fucked. Everything sucks.” That said, be careful not to medicate bitterness because you’ve mistaken it for depression, because the truth is, you’re right: Everything does suck most of the time and there’s a fine line between bitterness and astute cultural observation.

There is a weird truth to the idea that if you really don’t care, things will generally go your way. If you’re really invested and emotionally attached, things will get away from you or at least get chaotic and scary.

I have no patience for contemporary handlebar mustaches. They anger me. They look indulgent and ridiculous. Anytime I see one all I can imagine is the guy twisting away at the waxed curls in his mirror like a villain of self-avoidance. If you have a handlebar mustache, that is pretty much all you are. You are a delivery system for a handlebar mustache.