Truly Horrible Advice

3 min readDec 4, 2021

Five Things Not to Follow

We’ve all certainly encountered amazing advice. Words that become our credos. That’s great, because without little mottos to follow in our daily encounters, where would we be?

But then, there are also these phrases, bits and pieces of everyday life, that we keep hearing, and they are AWFUL. Why do they keep popping up? They are treacle that we just keep hearing, and yet — we should totally trash them once and for all. There are no doubt more that belong on this list, but I’m starting with my Fave Five (in no particular order):

God Doesn’t Give You More Than You Can Handle

Excuse Me? Come again? Sure, people are resilient, and we tend to muddle our way through whatever crisis happens to come our way, but that’s only because we have darn few choices in the matter. I mean, really. Besides, what if you don’t even believe in god? Then what? Who is it that is giving you this stuff that is handle-able? Hmmm?

Do What You Love and You’ll Never Work Another Day In Your Life

Umm…nope. Even when we thoroughly adore the stuff we do, there is labor involved. I adore writing. Truly, I do. But it’s work. My son is an actor, and there he is, slaving away at rehearsals, stumbling over lines and choreography. Why? Because to be good at it, to improve upon each performance — it’s work! The real irony is, if you love what you do, you are more likely to work hard at it. If you are disconnected from the passion of your job, that’s when you are unlikely to work hard, so put that in your pipe and smoke it, why don’tcha?

Live Every Day Like It’s Your Last Day On Earth

I don’t know about you, but if I knew today was my grand finale, I would shirk all responsibilities and just hang out with the people I love and the people who love me. In fact, I would ask all of them to shirk their duties as well. We’d be a happy bunch of shirkers, all damn day. So I can’t live today as if it’s my last, or I’d soon be booted out of my home, or at least living among the filth that I refuse to clean up because, hey, who cleans on their last day?