Drums Unlimited has three solo tracks, though I don’t remember which is which. Of course anything from that album has good drumming so check it out. In particular check out the track “All Africa”. I like jazz music and all but I’ve concluded it’s not my thing, and I’m cool with that. I don’t know if I’ll ever listen to a ’50s or ’60s hard-bop record, which is like the equivalent of the symphonic repertoire in jazz, in that when you’re getting into the genre you lean on it heavily but it runs out quickly and you kind of get tired of the form musically as well, unless it’s a genius like Joseph Haydn or Miles Davis.

So we’re kind of kindred spirits in that there seems to be a lot of parallels in our lives, we just went in different directions. Thinking through your relationship problems – take this all with a grain of salt as I was celibate for a decade and my relationships since have decidedly not been long-term, and I’m not currently looking so my last serious relationship was in my mid 20s.

But one thing I concluded is that I needed a cougar in my early 20s to make me a bit of a man, and one turned up. A lot of life is the right person turning up at the right time – like me, you needed one, but for fate or dumb luck you didn’t have one. You could be Freudian about it but given that most of my crushes in high school and especially in middle school were on my teachers rather than classmates, I think some people are just like that. (Your virginity is only as big a deal as you make it.)

So although Fortune did you dirty, like the lottery, you can’t win if you don’t play; unlike the lottery, sitting it out is the unwise choice. Still fortunately, you can make your own luck if you improve yourself and face outward You need a change of job, too. I don’t know what kind of financial hit you would incur from taking a retail job, but you’d be around people all the time Not just coworkers, but customers.

The biggest piece of advice I can give you is to put your fucking phone away. Switching to a flip phone causes more problems than it solves, but consider (a) wearing a watch if you habitually check the time on your phone; or (b) turning on airplane mode when you get to work. I’m serious about this Smartphones in public are a Very Bad Thing. Check out the break room at work and see if anybody’s aware of anything besides their phones. Don’t follow them. Next break you take, people-watch. Notice small details about things and people. Is the coffee carafe twelve cups like a commercial coffeemaker, or are the enterprise ones special? Go check it out abd take a mental note of it. Think to yourself, “if Elon Musk requires all federal employees to justify their existence weekly as was announced today, doesn’t that introduce the efficiency and morale hit of micromanagement, wasting taxpayer dollars and cutting against the mission DOGE claims to ptofess?” Ponder this aa you note everybody walking in and out the door, nodding hello to your acquaintances as needed, and watch what everybody is doing. And you still have five minutes! You never know how long 15 minutes is until you spend it doing nothing, just refreshing the mind abd resting the body. Note that if you have a creepy demeanor this might not work for you.

The younger generation calls this act of merely existing, in a bizarre appropriation of a well-established, obscene teem, “raw-dogging”. Yuppie lifestyle gurus give it a paeudo-Eastern theme call it “practicing mindfulness”. Howwver you call it – bite your tongue if you have to when they bring qi and pink Himalayan salt into it – look into it.

The keys to happiness are good brain chemistry, which can be altered, luck (in the classical languages something like “felix” means both “lucky” and “happy”. The very word “happy” illustrates this: the “hap” is the same as in “mishap” or “happening”. Things are happening well = you’re lucky = you’re literally hap-pu). A girlfriend can be roughly substituted by a dog for physical affection and a close friend or work wife for your more spiritual needs. My dog is more than just a pet. He’s a roommate, best friend, sidekick, and son all wrapped into a speckled one-eyed package. Life has been a dream since he came into my life. There’s nothing like a good dog, it’s like amphetamines where it just makes everything better across the board until you run out then you feel horrible for hours. Let’s hope I don’t run out of him for many years yet.

Read Seneca’s moral epistles (epistulae morales ad Lucillum, known by various titles by whichever publishing house, like Letters from a Stoic put out by Penguin Classics. A true gangsta will buy the Loeb Classical Library edition, but the abridged Penguin version is better than nothing. Certainly it’s available on the internet but you need to remember translations are copyrighted, so it can actually be hard to find a good modern translation on the Internet). Stoicism haa been appropriated by bros in their various guises – tech bros, gym rats, MMA fighters, ambitious type-A lifemaxxers – but I came into it the honest, scholarly way. When I see that Marcus Aurelius is Mark Zuckerberg’s favorite philosopher, I’m embarrassed a little I named my dog Seneca).

If you can’t be religious, adopt a philosophy. This stuff applies to every aspect to life and will give your existence direction. There’s a reason that theology and philosophy have been historically in the same academic department.

But in closing, raw-dog life, or “practice mindfulness” if you will. I didn’t think about it as such, but I raw-dogged the DMV. Just sat, filled out the form, and waited two hours. I didn’t get bored. There’s a certain pleasing rhythm to just sitting and taking it all in. It’s marred by association with pop self-help psychology like a Dr. Phil guest expert, but mindfulness is the key. Like, to everything.

You’re not an unattractive guy, as I think I said in another post, so if you’re getting zero matches (or matches only from zeroes) you’re doing something wrong. Encouragement: you’re doing something wrong, you are not wrong. I can only imagine your bio leaves something to be desired. You should do this anyway, but if it’s the means to an end of pulling pussy so be it: study poetry and rhetoric. Secondary English education in this country is a disgrace, overfocussing on boring fiction at the expense of the nuts and bolts of language. Is Raskolnikov just important enough to displace knowing how and when to whip out a hendiadys? That’s education that will keep on giving to your writing for the rest of your life.

Rant over. Here endeth the rant. Put your fucking phone away. Ramadan mubarak.