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But Feelings, No Matter How Strong Or “ugly,” Are Not A Part Of Who You Are. They Are The Radio Stations Your Mind Listens To If You Don’t Give It Something Better To Do. Feelings Are Fluid And Dynamic; They Change Frequently. Feelings Are Something You Have, Not Something You Are. Like Physical Beauty, A Cold Sore, Or An Opinion. Admitting You Feel Rage Or Terrible Pain Or Regret Or Some Old, Rotten Blame Does Not Mean These Feelings Are Part Of Who You Are As A Person. What These Feelings Mean Is, You Have To Change Your Thinking To Be Free Of Them.

-Augusten Burroughs

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But Feelings, No Matter

Augusten Burroughs

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But Feelings, No Matter How Strong Or “ugly,” Are Not A Part Of Who You Are. They Are The Radio Stations Your Mind Listens To If You Don’t Give It Something Better To Do. Feelings Are Fluid And Dynamic; They Change Frequently. Feelings Are Something You Have, Not Something You Are. Like Physical Beauty, A Cold Sore, Or An Opinion. Admitting You Feel Rage Or Terrible Pain Or Regret Or Some Old, Rotten Blame Does Not Mean These Feelings Are Part Of Who You Are As A Person. What These Feelings Mean Is, You Have To Change Your Thinking To Be Free Of Them.

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There Is Nothing About Myself That I Wouldn't Reveal Or Write About. I Don't Care How Horrendous Or Ridiculous I May Appear In Person Or In Print. There Is Great Freedom In Not Caring What Other People Think.

Some Damage Is Too Severe, Some Harm Endures. And What You Have To Do Is Accept It. And By Accept It I Mean, Don’t Be The Paralyzed Person In The Bed Who Is Waiting To Walk Again. Realize, It’s Never Gonna Happen. And Find Some Other Way To Get Around –swing From A Vine, Get A Mad Max Wheelchair. Anything But…wait.

Everybody In Recovery Smokes. If You Don't Like Smoking, Don't Even Bother Trying To Get Sober. Just Stay Drunk.

Long Marriages Have Ended In Ruin Over Tiny And Insignificant Grievances That Were Never Properly Aired And Instead Grew Into A Brittle Barnacle Of Hatred.

While I Liked Hamsters, Too, The Habitrail Cage Was Expensive. Even I Could See That The Interconnecting Boxes, Tubes, And Spheres Could Easily Bankrupt A Family And Lead To Addiction Later In Life. Because, How Would You Know When To Stop? How Could You Stop? An Entire City Could Be Built With A Habitrail.

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The Past Does Not Haunt Us. We Haunt The Past. We Allow Our Minds To Focus In That Direction. We Open Memories And Examine Them. We Reexperience Emotions We Felt During The Painful Events We Experienced Because We Are Recalling Them In As Much Detail As We Can.

You Can Make Almost Anything A Learning Or Positive Experience. I Think I Offer A Good Example Of How To Make The Most Out Of What Life Gives You And How To Keep Moving On.

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But Feelings, No Matter How Strong Or “ugly,” Are Not A Part Of Who You Are. They Are The Radio Stations Your Mind Listens To If You Don’t Give It Something Better To Do. Feelings Are Fluid And Dynamic; They Change Frequently. Feelings Are Something You Have, Not Something You Are. Like Physical Beauty, A Cold Sore, Or An Opinion. Admitting You Feel Rage Or Terrible Pain Or Regret Or Some Old, Rotten Blame Does Not Mean These Feelings Are Part Of Who You Are As A Person. What These Feelings Mean Is, You Have To Change Your Thinking To Be Free Of Them.

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He Continues To Smile Expectantly. I Take A Step Back. I Don't Want To Catch Whatever He Has. He Is A Disturbing Out-of-uniform Santa.

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I Never Listen To Music When I Write.

Listening To Music

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Giving And Receiving

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And I Tend To Listen To Npr When I'm Not Writing.

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My Mistake Was In Underestimating The Emotional Force Of A Song You Have Already Hear A Thousand Times.

Marriage Is Overdone. As Long As There Are People, People Are Going To Find It Interesting.

Life Would Be Fabric-softener, Tuna-salad-on-white, Pta-meeting Normal.

Decisions Are Beautiful. They Are The Evidence Of Thought And Care. Decisions Are The Polishing Cloths Of Life.

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No Matter What I've Written, Someone Somewhere Has Come Up To Me And Said, "me Too." The Truth Can Be Offensive, But It's Always Nourishing, In A Way. You Recognize It. You Can Feel It. And Even If [readers] Think, "my God, I Would Never Get In Those Situations," Within Those Ridiculous Circumstances That I Have Created For Myself, They Know The Way I Respond Is Probably What They Would Do Too.

It's Weird - Sort Of Not Terribly Wise - To Take A Book That Was Successful And Then Change Its Cover.

I Don't Have A Fixed Routine. I Write Every Day But I Don't "write" Every Day, If That Makes Any Sense. In Other Words, I Email With My Friends Constantly And Sometimes I'll Pull Out Something I've Written And Save It.

When You Say, "i Need More Confidence," What You're Really Saying Is, "i Need Those People Over There To Approve Of Me." That Is The Desire To Control Other People And What They Think. The First Person Who Figures Out How To Do This Owns The World.

I Loved Most When His Eyelashes Twitched And He Blinked, And Suddenly Happiness Was There Inside His Eyes. Unmistakable. Like A Single Word Printed On A Clean White Page.

I Realized I Could Really Become Hooked On These Happy Pills. They Gave Me A Glorious Feeling Of General Well-being And Didn't Make Me Fat, Like Alcohol. I Wondered If There Was Any Harm In Being Addicted To Only These.

I Don't Think Writers - In General - Ever Achieve The Fame Of Movie Stars. For The Simple Reason That Only A Fraction Of The Population Reads. But I Guess There Are Exceptions.

Like Every Child, I Adored Her. Until I Formed A Brain And Got To Know Her.

The Past Doesn't Haunt Us, We Haunt The Past.

After Was Better. Before Was Only There So After Could Happen.

Because I've Lived In One Room My Entire Life, Working At The Same Table That You Use To Pay Bills At And Eat At. It's Going To Be Nice To Have Actual Space.

I Understood At Once, I Am Not Living, But Actively Dying. I Am Smoking, Living Unhealthily. I’m Shutting Down. I Need To Go The Other Way, Inside. And It Was So Clear To Me What I Was Doing. It Was Suddenly Perfectly Clear. I Understood, I Need To Write. Live Here, In My Words, And My Head. I Need To Go Inside, That’s All. No Big, Complicated, Difficult Thing. I Just Need To Go In Reverse. And Not Worry About What To Write About, But Just Write. Or, If I’m Going To Worry About What To Write, Then Do This Worrying On Paper, So At Least I’m Writing And Will Have A Record Of The Anxiety.

There's Not Enough Of Me Left Over.

What Police Officer Would Dare Ticket Death's Minivan?

But I Can Also Write In Crappy Motel Rooms, While Standing In Line, Or Sitting In The Dentist's Chair.

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Reading Takes Solitude And It Takes Focus.

Once I Decided To Write, To Be Published, I Knew It Would Happen.

I Knew That If I Wrote A New Book Every Six Months Or Every Year, If I Continued To Read Great Books, Eventually I Would Write Something Worthy Of Publication. I Understood I Might Be In My Forties Or My Fifties Or Even My Sixties, But I Felt Confident That It Would Happen.

When People Meet Me, Many Times They're Very Surprised Because They Expect Someone Who Is Kind Of Wacky With Seven Piercings And Very Hip And Cool And New York City, And I'm Not.

A Lot Of People Can Be Afraid Of The Masking Because People Can Misrepresent Themselves [in The Internet] And They Can Pose As People They're Not. Well, Yeah; That's True. That's One Side Of It. But The Other Side Of It Is That It Equalizes You And If You Happen To Be A Person Who Is Not Equal In The Eyes Of The Greater Society That's A Damn Good Thing.

I Don't Sit Down At Nine In The Morning And Begin Writing And Then Take A Break For Lunch And Stop At Four. I Have No Structure Like That. I Am At My Computer Constantly, More Or Less Attached To It. I Live On-line And Hate Being Off-line And Don't Care How Unhealthy It Is.

I Wouldn't Want To Waste Any Of My Brain Cells On Forgiving If It's Holding Me Back.

I Never Get Sick Of Writing My Own Stories Because There's A Certain Comfort In Knowing You Will Never Run Out Of Material. It's Relaxing, Actually, To Write.

The Line Between Normal And Crazy Seemed Impossibly Thin. A Person Would Have To Be An Expert Tightrope Walker In Order Not To Fall.

I Think People Tend To See The Bigger Point, Which Is Maybe Not Fitting In And Feeling Like You Didn't Have The Childhood That You Expected You Would Have, Or That You Felt Lonely Or Struggled With Drugs And Alcohol Or Just That You Were Able To Achieve Your Dreams.

The Only Other People Who Have Had Experiences Similar To Those Of This Man Were Locked Up Inside Institutions For The Criminally Insane. The Difference Is, This Guy Gets Business Cards.

In Some Ways, Blogging Is Like Drinking - It Gives A Person Permission To Be A Total Asshole.

There's A Lot About Being "a Writer" That Has Nothing To Do With Writing. That's One Thing I've Discovered. You've Got To Meet With The Sales Force, And You've Got To Have All These Luncheons, And Be Gracious, And You've Got To Give A Lot Of Presentations And You've Got To Give A Lot Of Speeches, And You've Got To Be On Tour.

You Are Allowed To Be Alive. You Are Allowed To Be Somebody Different. You Are Allowed To Not Say Goodbye To Anybody Or Explain A Single Thing To Anyone, Ever.

I'm Like The Guy Who Prepares Your Taxes Or A Dentist. I'm Very Conservative And Boring In A Lot Of Ways.

It Was Unnerving, The Way She Could Go From Cool Efficiency To Sarcastic To Sweet Within The Space Of Thirty Seconds. I Found It Very Manipulative And Controlling. It Put The Other Person Constantly On-guard. And It Was Extremely Intimidating Because You Never Knew When She Was Going To Snap. I Made A Mental Note To Refine These Skills Within Myself.

I Once Read About A Guy Who Lost His Arms In A Fire. The Nurse Took Pity On Him And Gave Him A Hand Job. I Don't Even Get That.

The Problem With Not Having Anybody To Tell You What To Do, I Understood, Is That There Was Nobody To Tell You What Not To Do.

The Secret To Being A Writer Is That You Have To Write. It's Not Enough To Think About Writing Or To Study Literature Or Plan A Future Life As An Author. You Really Have To Lock Yourself Away, Alone, And Get To Work.

In General, Advertising Isn't A "creative" Atmosphere. It's A Business Atmosphere And Your Job Is Puzzle Solving. My Favorite Aspect Of The Business, I Guess, Was Presenting To Clients. What I Enjoyed Least Were The Clients. Worried Corporate Brand Managers, Trying To Dumb-down Their Ads For The Stupid American Population. I Hated The Disrespect That These People Had For "consumers."

And Human Instinct Is Ancient And Reliable, Utterly Mysterious And Possibly Capable Of Great Genius. I Believe That Refined, Fluent Instincts Are A Person's Most Valuable Asset. My Own Instincts Have Repeatedly Guided Me Against The Grain Of Logic And Probability. When I Have Trusted And Followed Their Direction, They Have Never Been Wrong. I Don't Know How Or Why. But I Know That Every Significant Experience-positive Or Negative-sharpens Them And Makes Them More Accurate.

I Don't Really Think Of My Blog As A Real Blog. It's A Lame Blog. It's More Like My When-the-mood-strikes Update, Or Smoke Signal.

Perfection Is The Satin-lined Casket Of Creativity And Originality. If You Are A Perfectionist, At Least Stop Telling Everybody You're One And Try To Get Over It Yourself, Alone In Your Home With The Lights Off

When I First Thought Of Being A Writer I Had Visions Of Stacks Of Books In Stores With My Name On Them, That Sort Of Thing. But I Never Imagined This Would Be The Reaction.

Confidence Is A Reduction Of Your Own Interest In Whether Others Are Thinking About You And If So, What They're Thinking.

Thinking About You

Applause Is A Constant Thing In Aa. It's How We Buy Drinks For Each Other.

I Thought, I Can't Do Advertising Any More, So I Was Downloading All These Pdf Applications From Community Colleges. And I Thought, I'll Become A Paramedic. I'll Get A Two-year Associate Degree, If I Can Get In.

I Hate News And Information And Anything That Threatens To Puncture The Bubble Of Oblivion In Which I Live.

New York City Is A Place Where You Can Lock Yourself Up In Your Little Studio Apartment, And Not Go Outside At All, And Not Feel In The Slightest Guilty About It.

Love Is A Helium-based Emotion; Love Always Takes The High Road.

Taking The High Road

But She Did Love Him. I Believe It. I Know Exactly How That Is. To Love Somebody Who Doesn't Deserve It. Because They Are All You Have. Because Any Attention Is Better Than No Attention.

I've Just Finished My Next Collection, Possible Side Effects, And I'm Now Working On A Collection Of Holiday Stories As Well As A Memoir About My Relationship With My Father.

But I Am Not Here Ironically; I Am Here Sincerely.

If You Find You Require Willpower, You Aren't Ready To Lose Weight.

I Really Look At My Childhood As Being One Giant Rusty Tuna Can That I Continue To Recycle In Many Different Shapes.

Before I'm A Writer, I'm Definitely A Reader And When I Read Memoir, I Really Want It To Be True.

My Instinct Was Always Have Your Gun In Your Hand. Especially When You Are Telling Somebody To Do Something. But, In Fact, The Police Academy Discourages This. They Feel Your Gun Should Rarely, If Ever, Be Brought Out Of Its Holster. Most Certainly Not When Children Are Involved, Which Is Exactly When I Saw Myself Using My Gun Most Often. A Truant Teenager Loitering Outside A Movie Theater Is Going To Be Far More Motivated To Return To School When He Has The Barrel Of A .45 Pressed Against His Cheek.

I Feel Like They Are Two Different Things, And When I Write Books, They're Just Books. If They Can Be Movies That's Okay. But I Would Write A Novel That Couldn't Be A Film.

So That's What I'm Here To Become. And Suddenly, This Word Fills Me With A Brand Of Sadness I Haven't Felt Since Childhood. The Kind Of Sadness You Feel At The End Of Summer. When The Fireflies Are Gone, The Ponds Have Dried Up And The Plants Are Wilted, Weary From Being So Green.

A Lot Of Being A Writer Doesn't Have Anything To Do With Writing. It's Ironic - I Have To Squeeze The Books In, Even Though That's What It's All About.

For Exactly The Same Reason, It Is Sometimes Satisfying To Cut Yourself And Bleed. On Those Gray [sic] Days Where Eight In The Morning Looks No Different From Noon And Nothing Has Happened And Nothing Is Going To Happen And You Are Washing A Glass In The Sink And It Breaks - Accidentally - And Punctures Your Skin. And Then There Is This Shocking Red, The Brightest Thing In The Day, So Vibrant It Buzzes, This Blood Of Yours. That Is Okay Sometimes Because At Least You Know You're Alive.

Childhood Is What Ended Me Up In The Hospital And Teetering On The Edge Of Deathly Alcoholism. It Was Really Good For Me To Accept It. To Accept All The Embarrassment And The Shame So I Don't Feel Like I Used To.

(the New Boyfriend) Knows I Write Every Day For Hours But Has No Idea That All I’m Writing About Is Me. It Seems Wiser To Let Him Think I’m An Aspiring Novelist Instead Of Just An Alcoholic With A Year Of Sobriety Who Spends Eight Hours A Day Writing About The Other 16.

My Window Fogs And This Makes Me Feel Like There Is No World Outside Of The Car.

You Would Be Amazed By What You Can Give Up, Lose, Or Break, And Yet Still Be A Person Who Gets Happy Over Brownies.

I Know Exactly How That Is. To Love Somebody Who Doesn't Deserve It.

I Knew That He Was As Reliable As A Mathematical Formula.

I Don't Read Memoirs. But If You Write A Memoir, I Would Think You'd Want People To Know, "o.k., Look, I've Taken Some Liberties Here." It's Just A Matter Of Being Open With Your Readers.

I Sit There And Think How It Isn't Fair That I Can't Drink At All, Even A Little. I Realize I Have Crammed An Entire Lifetime Of Moderate Drinking Into A Decade Of Hard-core Drinking And That Is Why. I Blew My Wad.

He's A Really Nice Guy, If Only I Weren't Me.

It Was A Salad Bar Of Phobias

I Love You," She Said, And I Knew She Meant It Because She Spoke The Words From The Heart At The Center Of Her Chest. This, At Least, Had Not Been Left Behind At The Hospital.

Nothing Made Sense To Me Anymore. I Knew I Was Young, I Knew I Was Small. But I Was Worried That I Might Already Be Ruined.

No Matter Your Spiritual Beliefs, If You Hold Any, The Answer Is The Same: Sometimes, Why Is Not Knowable. If You Open The Refrigerator Door And A Tub Of Kozy Shack Tapioca Pudding Tumbles Out And Splats Open Onto The Floor, You Clean It. You Don’t Stand There And Question Why It Happened, How It Was Possible. Why Doesn’t Matter Now.

The Truth Is Humbling, Terrifying, And Often Exhilarating. It Blows The Doors Off The Hinges And Fills The World With Fresh Air.

[christmas] Holidays Are A Heavy, Heavy Time. We Make Light Of Them With Our Red And Green And Our Stockings And Candy Canes, But People Think Heavy Thoughts Over The Holidays Because That's When You're Thinking About Family. Are We Close? Or Are We Not As Close As Other People?

Truthfulness Itself Is Almost Medication, Even When It’s Served Without Advice Or Insight.

There Is No Such Thing As Too Ordinary To Write About, Whether That's Life Or A Scene In A Novel. What's Interesting To People, Whether It's Memoir Or Fiction, Is The Truth.

Even Painfully Shy And Awkward People Are Not Painfully Shy Or Awkward When They Are Alone. The Way To Access This Natural, Comfortable Alone-self When You Are With Others Is By Choosing To Forbid Yourself To Wonder What "they" Are Thinking. Instead, Force Yourself To Exist In The Instant, Then Take It- And Give It- As It Comes.

Maybe You Feel Pressure To Be Positive Because So Many People Rely On Your Good, Fake-positive Energy? If That's The Case, Screw Everybody Else. You're Not A Bottle Of Valium.

Positive Energy

I Am Prone To Envy. It Is One Of My Three Default Emotions, The Others Being Greed And Rage. I Have Also Experienced Compassion And Generosity, But Only Fleetingly And Usually While Drunk, So I Have Little Memory.

You Cannot Be A Prisoner Of Your Past Against Your Will. Because You Can Only Live In The Past Inside Your Mind.

I Couldn't Help But Think, This Car Is Taking Me To A Mental Hospital And My Mother Is Treating It Like Open-mic Night At A Greenwich Village Café.

I Was On The Cover Of A Lot Of Newspapers. I Was On The Cover Of Usa Today For Every Single Day For A Month. I Was On The Masthead, So I Tend To Get Recognized A Lot, And In Weird Places. It's Always Flattering, And It's Always Odd. It's Always At The Worst Possible Time.

I'll Always Write About What's Going On In My Life And The Reason For That Is It's Not Actually Because I'm So Fascinated With Myself, It's Because I Can't Think. I Can't Think Like Have Thoughts In My Head And Think Them Through And Come To A Conclusion. It's Like Math For Me.

And She's A Nurse. Do You Know How Hard Nursing School Is? It's Like Medical School. So She's Obviously Smart.

I Don't Worry About Anything In The Internet Age. I Have Been Online Since I Was Aware Of It: 1985 In San Francisco. It Has Changed Everything In My Life. I Would Not Want To Even Be Alive In An Era That Did Not Have It Because It Is Essential To Our Evolution As A Species.

If You Hate Your Life, You Haven't' Seen Enough Of It. If You Hate Your Life, It's Because Your Life Is Too Small And Doesn't' Fit You.

This Is What Happens When You Go Against The Grain Of Truth. You Get Splinters Later On.

Optimism Sprouts From The Knowledge That You Are In Control Of Your Own Life, Not Your Past And Not Those Around You. Part Of Being In Control Is Taking Responsibility For How You Feel. This Means Not Just Admitting To Uncomfortable Feelings But Then Examining Your Circumstances To See What Can Be Done To Change These Feelings At The Source.

You Manufacture Beauty With Your Mind

I Think That The Internet Is Our Most Profound And Beautiful Achievement. It Is Magnificent. We Have The Internet As A Layer Of Our Thinking That Doesn't Control Us, We Control It, Yet We Don't Have To Be Aware Of It. It Will Be Like A Suit That Really Fits Well.

Never Work With Children, Puppies Or Bulimics.

Imperfections Are Attractive When Their Owners Are Happy With Them.

When I Ate Vanilla Frosting Straight From The Can, I Could Feel God Standing Right Nest To Me Like A Real Best Friend, Watching, And Smiling, And Wishing He Had A Mouth.

Each Time My Mother Went Psychotic, I Hoped It Would Be The Last Time. Afterward She Would Tell Me, 'i Think That Was The Final Episode. I Think I Had A Breakthrough.' And I Would Believe-for A Few Months-that It Was True. That She Was Back To Stay. Maybe It Was Like Having A Rock Star Mother Who Was Always On The Road. Were There Benatar Children? Did They Sit Around And Wonder If Their Mom's Hell Is For Children Tour Was Going To Be Her Last Tour?

There's Never A False Note In A Berg Novel.

I Suppose Home Is, For Me, More Of A State Of Mind. It's Really More Of About Being Where I Want To Be With People I Care About.

With My Own Memoirs, They Are Truthful, And I Write Everything Fully Expecting To Some Day End Up Televised On Court Tv, And I'm Fully Prepared To Be Challenged Legally On It. Everything I Write Is The Truth And I Know That I Would Win.

I Was Struck With A Bolt Of Distilled Horror Like I Have Never Known Before. Far Worse Than Suddenly Finding Yourself Walking Through A Prison Cafeteria Wearing Daisy Duke Shorts And A Jane Fonda Headband.

Finding Yourself

I Think Writers Tend To Be Experience Junkies, And I Think They Also Tend To Want To Be On The Outside Looking In.

Just As I Had Long Suspected, A Person Didn't Really Need Math For Anything Anyway. Maybe Some People Did. Some Limited People.

Your Mind Is Like An Unsafe Neighborhood; Don't Go There Alone.

Nobody's Trying To Kill You, Deirdre. You're Killing Yourself.

Killing Yourself

Although I Was Able To Maintain A Pleasant Expression, I Was Mentally Throwing Up In Her Face.

As A Writer, You Can't Allow Yourself The Luxury Of Being Discouraged And Giving Up When You Are Rejected, Either By Agents Or Publishers. You Absolutely Must Plow Forward.

Maybe It Was A Patty Hearst Thing. Stockholm Syndrome Or Whatever It's Called When You're Being Held Against Your Will But Then You Become Sucked In And Fall In Love. Or If Not Exactly Love, You Fall Into Something You Can't See Out Of. 'i Can't Shoot A Machine Gun' Becomes 'hey, This Hardly Has Any Kick-back!

Falling In Love

The Most Valuable Moments And Experiences That Life Has To Offer Are Found Only Along Its Most Treacherous Paths.

It’s A Wonder I’m Even Alive. Sometimes I Think That. I Think That I Can’t Believe I Haven’t Killed Myself. But There’s Something In Me That Just Keeps Going On. I Think It Has Something To Do With Tomorrow, That There Is Always One, And That Everything Can Change When It Comes.

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