Work.Retire.Die.

I’ve been noticing during my surfing of the web that it is now “cool” to bash spending time with your family aka your flesh and blood. This is particularly prevalent around the holidays, when we should be spreading love and not hate. If I have to read one more BuzzFeed article about “avoiding your family during the holidays” and “10 ways to ignore your crazy racist uncle,” I’m going to fucking lose it. I love my family and I love spending time with them. You should too. If not, please get your negativity off my blog. It’s bad for business.

Now, if you’re lucky, you get to come home for the holidays for at least a week, hopefully 2. Most places will let you at least work from home most of this time period. If your job is making you come in for work at all from December 22nd to January 2nd, you need a new job. We are always hiring at WRD and can pay you money you couldn’t even begin to dream of (low to medium double figures).

Home for the holidays is a great time to bum out, see your family, and reload for the New Year. But, you need a carefully organized list of objectives for your time at home to make sure you do it right. They are as follows.

Objective #1: Convince Your Family You are Doing Fine

Oh you’re actually doing fine? Got a stable job? Loving relationship? Wake up every day with a smile on your face, ready to attack the world? Congrats weirdass. Everyone else is figuring it out and having more fun than you doing it. Get off my blog and go read the Wall Street Journal or something. You make me sick.

Now for us normal folks, the worst part about the holidays is getting berated by your family with questions that you’re honestly too afraid to ask yourself. There are 3 types of relatives so there are 3 different approaches to these inquisitions.

• Call it out before they do
  • Overview: Immediate family members or super aggressive/blunt relatives know your weaknesses and will pounce without a second thought. And stay after you about it.
  • Strategy: Attack your weaknesses head-on.
  • Tactics: You need prepared stories. Think of this as an elevator pitch for your flaws.
    • Your job is bullshit: “It’s not what I want to do with my career, but it’s been great to get experience. I’m learning a lot about what I don’t like.”
    • Still single: “You know I respect this family too much to bring someone home who isn’t perfect.”
    • Living at home: “My parents needed someone around the house for tech support. And what restaurant can beat my mom’s cooking!!” *Cue audience laughter*
• Smile and Nod
  • Overview: Most of your family doesn’t really care how you’re doing. They just need a few sentences to tide them over until next Christmas and be sure that you’re not like headed to jail or anything.
  • Strategy: Get it over with as soon as possible. Just tell them exactly what they want to hear and nod along to their advice.
  • Tactics: Basically be a little bitch. It’s ok to swallow your pride.
• Look Over Here
  • Overview: Sometimes people just won’t shut up. You need to get them off your back.
  • Strategy: Distract them with someone else who is doing even worse than you.
  • Tactics: Most people have one or two cousins or siblings that you can divert the focus to. If you’re the black sheep and everyone else is super successful, you may be in trouble. I’d recommend sabotaging someone else’s career if possible.

Objective #2: Free-load as much as humanly possible

The holiday season can be expensive. Home for the holidays is your chance to make that money back. If you’re spending more than $30 while you’re home, you’re making a big time mistake. There is absolutely no reason to eat a single meal outside of your house and I don’t want to hear otherwise.

The key is that you have to show a little appreciation here and there. Your parents don’t mind having you around, but no one likes a mooch. Help load the dishwasher or take out the trash. Fix the TV. Offer to cook one night (offer, don’t actually do it). In order to get love in this world, you gotta give love.

Objective #3: Catch up on everything you didn’t have time for

This is a good time to do those things you love before life got in the way.

• Sleep
  • 2 naps a day minimum. You should sleep so much you actually feel more tired.
• TV Shows
  • There’s like a million shows out there so you’ll find a good one. The only thing I’d say is avoid Mad Men. Everyone says its so good but that shit is impossible to get into and there’s like 300 hour-long episodes. You’ll start watching while you’re home and get to Season 2 and then forget to keep watching after break. Waste of time.
• Books
  • Reading is cool get over it

Pro-Tip: Do not plan to work-out. You’re not going to and you’re going to feel guilty about it. It’s the fucking winter man just drink and eat to exhaustion like the rest of us.

Objective #4: Prepare for the New year

I know a lot of negative Nancy’s say “what is this New Year New You nonsense? I’m going to be the same person I was last year.” I mean yeah, obviously personal change is hard but that doesn’t mean you should just stop trying. That’s loser talk.

The reason New Year’s Resolutions are a thing is not because the calendar changes from 2017 to 2018. It’s because you have time during the holidays to step back from your normal routine and really reconsider who you are and who you want to be. Also, New Year New You just sounds really cool.

It’s all in the kind of resolutions you make. I have a strategy to keep it positive and realistic and make sure I actually get them done.

• Frame them as goals and not resolutions. (ie I will have a sexy bod vs. I will work out 3x a week for the entire year)
• Stick to 1 or 2 big goals. 3 Max. Anything more is just dumb and you’re not going to do it.
• Keep them high level. Don’t get too specific. This way you can convince yourself you’re actually doing them.
• Write them down and check in every few months so you can feel guilty about not doing them.

One goal for all the readers is to drive every single other blog off of the Internet. The World Wide Web should be renamed WorkRetireDie.wordpress.com

Objective #5: Actually do something

When you get back to the office, people are going to ask you how your holiday was. They like definitely don’t give a shit, but you still need 1 or 2 anecdotes to share. Otherwise it’s weird. Plus, laziness can feel amazing but it’s a trap. This blog is for winners not deadbeats.

Couple of Ideas:

• Party Time
  • It’s pretty acceptable to get shit-faced around this time of year.  Do something cool with people you might not always chill with. Step out of that comfort zone.
    • Old Friends or Flings
      • If you/ or your home friends are from out of town, this is a great time to catch up and get shitfaced. If you’re lucky, you’re still tight with a crew of your high school friends and you can all get drunk in someone’s basement like old times.
      • If not, no judgment. Just get drunk at a family dinner and text your ex like a grown-up.
    • Family (you will learn things you cannot unlearn)
    • New Years (this is probably a separate post but a great New Year’s can be dope)
• Cultural Event
  •  This is the one time I’ll allow some culture to enter your life. This is only cool if your mom drags you to it.
    • Play
      • Not a musical though. Fuck musicals.
    • Movies
      • It’s award season so go see all the Oscar movies. You won’t feel as bad about wasting your day in movie theatre if the films are ~art~.
    • Some christmas shit in your town
      • Go see that big tree in the town center or the gingerbread house outside the supermarket. Pretty dumb but it’ll make your family happy.

Well that’s all folks. Enjoy the holidays. Make some resolutions you won’t keep. The 2018 version of you will be taking this world by storm. Don’t forget that.