Always: In Defense of Incest (You'll...You'll Need to Read On...) (Patreon)

Always do what you can. Will it be perfect? No. Will it be guaranteed to work out? No. But you’ll be surprised how far it can get you. Instead of thinking overwhelming thoughts, take underwhelming action. Persistence saves lives and makes dreams come true. This is not hyperbole. If you simply do what you can, that is, the very obvious, you will save a life, perhaps yours, perhaps someone else's. And the reverse is true as well. You don't need to be Superman, you just need to show up repeatedly.

In the movies, the girl next door looks like Betty on "Riverdale", and people (including you, her neighbour) are just creaming their pants whenever she walks by. In real life, however, the girl next door might as well be a blood relative. People still think she's hot; indeed, the consensus is that she's mother-effing Helen of Troy*'s hotter sister -- everyone else can see her cuteness -- but to you, she might as well be your sister. 

*(Take a second out of your no-doubt busy day to imagine her being played by 1996 Salma Hayek; ships gon' git launched, mayn!)

Verily, let it be known that I have a childhood friend (we've known each other since we were 4 years old!) whom people have always insisted is beautiful; but I just can't see it; I have never seen it; puberty literally changed nothing; she even models now, and yet she will still, always and forever, be annoying and gross to me (lol). She's just Rhonda; she'll always just be Rhonda. And we will fight over the TV remote and there won't be any cute, awkward silences afterwards, just a week of bitterness and snide remarks. And then we'll fight again. In fact, let me check her Facebook right now...

Yup. Still gross. Same annoying-a$$ Rhonda and her annoying-a$$ facial expressions.

Opportunity is like that. Opportunity is like the girl next door. And she lives, not just next door, but next second. Under your nose. And she's always there. She's right in front of you all day every day. She is close to you in space and time. Less than a Planck length away (lol, go with it). Opportunities surround us like air molecules and yet, for that very reason, we grow numb to them. The reason you, your friends, strangers in movies and even big companies don't take easy opportunities to improve is because those opportunities are gross; they're too close; they feel like drinking your own backwash; they feel like kissing your sister on the mouth -- you're like: "what twisted hell is this?". You want no part of it. It's yucky. We want new; we want distant; we want imported food; like Outkast, we want things so fresh and so clean clean. Screw what Amazon delivered yesterday: we want the next toy. 

But we are mistaken.

Now, actual incest is gross to us for a great many very good reasons, and if you need me to discourage you from it, then we have a serious problem. But when it comes to opportunity...you kind of want to be a little (and by "a little", I mean "extremely") incestuous. You wanna hit it with the ones all around you. To paraphrase Sarah Silverman, it's not incest, it's WINcest. You win by copulating (uniting body and mind) with the opportunities that exist all around you, that are familiar -- like family. It’s memetic sex — sexual reproduction between memes and opportunities. Find them Cerseis for your Jaime.

Juuuust gonna let that image sink in for a while...

:P

For real, though. Look around you. Look right here. Right now. Not over there. Here. Not next week. Here. Not soon. Not when you get everything set up just right. Here. Now. Everything you need to win is already here. You don't need to wish and hope for food; you have been provided for; you were born and live in the grocery store, and it is stacked: just grab something off the shelves. You're not a cartoon character on a blank page, like that annoying pseudo-Celtic quasi-leprechaun on "McGee and Me!"; you're a living being in a Universe teeming with opportunities for wincest ;) . So be a metaphorical redneck: improvise, make stuff work, copulate with whatever's nearby.