Happy People Are Annoying

by Josh Peck

You are an amalgamation of trauma; I hate to break it to you. There’s a good chance that someone in the past five generations of your ancestral tree lived an incredibly unfair existence. So unfair in fact that their sole purpose was survival and the thought of living a good life didn’t go much further than making sure they had enough to eat that day. Can you believe that? No bucket list? No vision boards? I didn’t stand a chance at being normal, and I’m guessing if you picked up a book with a sassy title like this one, you didn’t either. My birth alone was fraught with an innumerable amount of fuckery (more on that in chapter 1). However, because the instinct to procreate is so deeply embedded in our brain, because the best part of having kids is making ’em, our ancestors threw caution to the wind, along with any and all forms of contraception available at the time, and said, “Screw it! Let’s do it!” They could have spared us this odd experiment that is existence, but they didn’t and thank God for tequila, lest many of us would have remained but sparkles in our parents’ eyes.

when you’re a single mom and an only child, the dynamic is one of pilot and co-pilot. It has to be, especially when you’re struggling, which is most of the time for a parent doing it on their own.

was a walking TV Guide, I knew all the shows on every channel except for Home and Garden because we neither had a home nor a garden.

“Find the people who support you to be what you want to be, who push you to be your very best, and if you find yourself in a room with someone who doesn’t make you feel that way, leave immediately.”

Anger is about the quiet, seething judgment of everyone and everything. You become the self-appointed arbiter of all that is right and wrong in the world and if people would only act the way you thought they should, life would be infinitely better.

Fear is passive, it’s reactionary.

Anger is active, it’s an offensive strike, it’s the o...

When you’re angry, everything is personal and nothing is random. You take on the injustice of the world, and if there’s no injustice, you create it. It felt good to be on the offensive, powerful.

Saturday nights I would order a large pizza, breadsticks, and dessert and eat the whole thing alone in my room. I’d power through it, slowly throughout the night, playing mind games, I’m just going to have two slices and save the rest for tomorrow. I’m only going to have half, that’s it, that’s my last slice. I’ll only eat the top of the rest, that’s healthy, bread is bad for you but mozzarella cheese and pepperoni aren’t, those are protein.

It’s no wonder why people’s spirits get crushed, you’re failing constantly. Start a diet on Monday, cheat on Wednesday, feel bad till Sunday, start again. Over and over the cycle continues, and over and over it felt as though a little more of life was passing me by.

I would go to stores and buy every piece of clothing I was too embarrassed to wear before, I

Who among us wants to revisit our high school years and regale in the memories of cystic acne and never-ending nosebleeds?

“When you’re ready, you’ll do it.”

“Ya know, no one ever accuses the gym of not working when people gain weight; they just assume that person stopped going.”

Ego, it’s a funny thing. We need it, in moments of extreme adversity; that voice, that inner Joe Pesci, can sometimes be the only thing that pushes you to get out of bed in the morning. Fuck ’em, fuck ’em all, we’ll prove ’em all wrong, we’ll show them. And sometimes you do.

What I could do is make more videos. I made one every day, and it turns out the algorithm shines brightly on those who feed it because by August I was the number one person on Vine, overtaking Harry Styles with 3.5 million followers. And while Harry will always be an icon and have a lower BMI than me, I hope to one day bring this up to him as I gaze at his perfect bone structure whilst his security has me removed.

“Assume you’re not Beyoncé. Assume that perhaps your overflowing wealth of talent will not be met with the perfect alchemy of luck and handwork that will combust into making you the biggest star in the world. Of course go for your dreams, but also nurture skills that are inherent to you, what are your super powers?”

Did you really read this whole thing? I have my doubts. You’re a skimmer, aren’t you? A couple of pages from each chapter? Be honest. The truth is, same. If this weren’t my book I’m not sure I would’ve read the whole thing; my copy editor could’ve very well replaced pages 96 through 111 with his own manifesto and in most cases I’d never know it.