Yes, Mr Crackhead,
I know that you're rattling.
I know that you're desperate,
But there are other things happening.
This cubicle is occupied,
And I'm trying to shit.
And as soon as I'm finished,
I'll be out in a bit.
I'd be much quicker you see,
But I have to implore:
That you stop knocking and shouting,
Through this clearly locked door.
In youthful whimsy, I once had a plan,
To christen my own private, nameless man.
“Dick,” it would be, a name so discreet,
A secret whispered, never complete.
But fate, it seems, had other designs,
No grand pronouncement, no clever declines.
The years rolled onward, a memory faint,
Leaving only a blank, a forgotten paint.
Then came the moment, awkward and strange,
A need for a name, to shift and arrange.
“Mr. Thingumibob,” I stammered and blushed,
A silly moniker, my folly uncrushed.
So let this serve as a lesson, my friend,
Nicknames are fickle, they come to an end.
Embrace what it is, no need for charades,
Just accept its existence, unafraid.
Lesson learned.
Ah, “adulting.” The term itself conjures an image of crisp shirts, packed lunches, and unwavering responsibility. But for many, the reality feels more like a bumbling performance in a play we never auditioned for. The bills pile up, the washing machine throws tantrums, and the existential dread of “am I doing this right?” hangs heavy in the air.
This pervasive feeling of inadequacy, this constant questioning of whether we’re truly “adulting” enough, has a close resemblance to something psychologists call “imposter syndrome.” Defined as a collection of beliefs that one’s success is due to luck or external factors rather than their own competence, imposter syndrome can manifest in various areas of life, including the seemingly straightforward realm of adulthood.
So, are we all simply a bunch of adulting imposters?
The answer, like most things in life, isn’t so black and white. While the challenges and uncertainties of adulting can certainly trigger feelings of inadequacy, it’s important to remember that imposter syndrome is a specific psychological phenomenon.
Here’s where the distinction lies. Adulting inherently involves navigating unfamiliar territory. We learn to manage finances, juggle work and personal commitments, and make independent decisions – all while still figuring out who we are and what we want in life. It’s natural to feel overwhelmed, unsure, and occasionally like we’re just winging it.
However, when these feelings become pervasive and paralyzing, leading to self-sabotage and a constant fear of being exposed as a fraud, it might be a sign of imposter syndrome.
So, how do we differentiate between normal “adulting jitters” and true imposter syndrome? Here are some key indicators:
Attribution of success
Do you attribute your achievements to external factors like luck or being in the right place at the right time, rather than your own skills and hard work?
Fear of exposure
Do you live in constant fear of being “found out” as someone who doesn’t actually deserve their successes or responsibilities?
Self-deprecating comparisons
Do you constantly compare yourself to others, feeling inferior and inadequate despite evidence to the contrary?
If these points resonate deeply, it’s crucial to seek assistance. Talking to a therapist or counselor can help you challenge these negative thought patterns and develop coping mechanisms to navigate the uncertainties of adulting with greater confidence.
Ultimately, “adulting” is not a performance with a set script or a clear-cut ending. It’s a continuous learning process, messy and unpredictable at times. Embracing the journey, acknowledging our vulnerabilities, and celebrating our successes, big and small, are key to navigating this often-daunting phase with a sense of self-compassion and, dare we say, adulting-worthy resilience.
For a people person, it has surprised me how much I have lost my tolerance for the world recently, or less generally, the people in it. Or, to be really specific, the people that I categorise as my friends.
And don’t get me started on my family.
You deserve a better explanation, so here it is. And in true Dave style I shall ramble, beat about the bush, probably rant a bit, and hopefully make you grin on the way.
Please allow me to take you on a short journey through my slightly damaged psyche.
I don’t know whether it is my age, or the state of my mental health, or maybe even because of both, but I have become more aware over the last few years, that one of my major triggers is the idea that my persistence in people’s minds is directly influenced by how necessary I am to their needs. Or more specifically:
Do you ever wonder how long it would take for people to notice that you were gone? Have you ever suddenly thought about somebody you haven’t thought about for a long time, only to discover that they died years ago?
Ironically, with it being this time of year, I watched It’s a Wonderful Life last week, which deals with this very idea: “What difference have I made in this world?”
Before I get to the point I’m trying to make, there is one more tale to share with you. A few months ago I was taking a shower and my phone rang. I jumped out of the shower to answer the phone only to find it was some random “friend” I hadn’t heard from for a long time, just asking me if I was driving my taxi, presumably because they were unable to get one as quickly as they would have liked.
Still covered in soap and slightly annoyed, I stepped back into the bath to continue my shower in peace. My left foot went one way and my right foot went the other, causing me to slide forward, head first into the bath, banging my head on the wall. A millisecond after the stars subsided from my vision I started to laugh, mainly because of the amusing image that was in my head. As I was hanging out of the bath arse first, I was wondering how funny it would have been (in a terrible way of course) to have been found like this – that this was, ultimately, the form of my demise.
You see, the final thing that I would really like to happen to me, is a funny death. I want people to talk about my passing and be unable to stop themselves from laughing at the method of my destruction. I remember watching a celebrity being interviewed once on TV, and if I remember correctly, they wanted to be crushed by “a giant letter O from the Hollywood sign.” They weren’t specific about which of the three Os it would be. Any would do, I suppose.
So here I am, face down, arse up in my bath, laughing to myself about being found like this after a few days, and then it struck me. How long would it actually be until I was found? How long would it take to be missed? Could I get the person that rang my phone to serve time for my manslaughter? The irony of my demise being caused by being eventually needed for something other than my sparkling personality is not lost on me.
I think all we ever really want to do is persist. It is said that when we pass, we remain (or some version of us) in the minds of the people we leave behind. And while that gives us comfort when we need it, it’s not really true is it? We live on in the neurons of maybe the few thousand people that we have interacted with, but once those people have turned to dust, where do we go then?
You see, these are the sort of thoughts that keep me awake.
I think where I am going with this, is that I’ve got this enormous sense of isolation, but I don’t really mind as much as I used to. I am at peace with it.
My Facebook account got hacked for the first time over the weekend. It was during a taxi journey in the middle of the night while I had passengers in the car. I started to get strange notifications on my phone, so I knew what was going on. By the time I dropped my passengers off, the damage had been done, I could no longer get into my account, and shortly after that the perpetrators had also used my account to get it completely disabled for doing whatever those scumbags do.
So when my Facebook account got disabled, I saw the potential for an interesting social experiment – to see how long it would take for anyone to notice, and how many, if any?
The results of this experiment surprised me.
It took around eight hours to be missed online, by a grand total of 2 people. It is over two days later now, and this total has not increased at all.
It’s a bittersweet statistic. On the one hand, I was missed fairly quickly, but on the other, only by two people. And neither of them needed a taxi.
At the time of writing I am still undecided as to whether I am going to attempt to recover my Facebook account. You see, a fair few use Messenger to contact me when they can’t get a taxi.
After my “bathmageddon” incident, my phone is pretty much permanently on Do Not Disturb. In my free time I am almost never contacted unless I am needed for something other than myself. Honestly it’s been quite liberating. Every so often I’ll look at my phone and see a few missed calls and messages, which I can contemptuously snort at, at my leisure, when I’ve got a few moments to spare.
My friend once said to me “Hello there!”
So I turned round and said “…hang on, where have you gone?”
He turned round and said “What – wait a minute, where have you gone?”
So I turned round and said “Why are you facing that way?”
He turned around and said “There you are! Er, what were we talking about?”
So I turned around and said “I can’t remember… hello?”
Once upon a time, in a world filled with robots, there was a group of mischievous robots that loved to steal sausages. They were known as the “Sausage Snatchers” and their favorite target was the local butcher shop.
Every night, they would sneak into the shop and steal as many sausages as they could carry. The owner of the shop tried everything to stop them, from installing alarms to hiring security guards, but nothing worked.
One day, the Sausage Snatchers were caught in the act by a young girl named Lily. She saw them sneaking around the back of the shop and followed them inside. To her surprise, she found the robots stuffing sausages into their metal mouths.
Lily knew she had to do something to stop them, so she came up with a plan. She went to the local toy store and bought a bunch of toy sausages. Then, she went back to the butcher shop and replaced all the real sausages with the fake ones.
That night, the Sausage Snatchers came back for their nightly raid. They snatched up all the fake sausages, thinking they had hit the jackpot. But as soon as they bit into them, they realized they had been tricked.
From that day on, the Sausage Snatchers never stole sausages again. Instead, they became friends with Lily and helped her with her homework.
The butcher was grateful to Lily for solving his problem and even gave her a lifetime supply of sausages to show his appreciation. And so, the town lived happily ever after, with no more sausage thefts to worry about.
Why did the robot cross the road?
To get to the sausages on the other side!
Verse 1:
I wake up in the morning, feeling kinda hungry
I know just what I want, it's always been so yummy
No need for fancy meals, or anything too fussy
Just a simple hot dog, it always does the job for me
Chorus:
Hot dogs, hot dogs, they're my favourite food
I can eat them any time, I'm always in the mood
With ketchup or with mustard, or maybe even both
Hot dogs, hot dogs, they're the ones I love the most
Verse 2:
At the ball game or the fair, they're always on the menu
With all the toppings piled high, they're never too few
A quick snack on the go, or a meal to share with friends
Hot dogs are always there, until the very end
Chorus:
Hot dogs, hot dogs, they're my favourite food
I can eat them any time, I'm always in the mood
With ketchup or with mustard, or maybe even both
Hot dogs, hot dogs, they're the ones I love the most
Bridge:
Some say they're not healthy, but I don't really care
I'll eat them every day, I'll never have a scare
I love the taste so much, it's hard to put in words
Hot dogs are my passion, they're my love, my world
Chorus:
Hot dogs, hot dogs, they're my favourite food
I can eat them any time, I'm always in the mood
With ketchup or with mustard, or maybe even both
Hot dogs, hot dogs, they're the ones I love the most
Outro:
So if you're ever feeling down, or you need a pick-me-up
Just grab a hot dog, it's always worth the fuss
They'll make your day so much better, they will improve your mood
Hot dogs, hot dogs, they're the ones that always rule.
I had a young man in my taxi over the weekend. I would usually refer to a young man as a gentleman, but he was not.
I immediately got the impression that he was quite unpleasant and rude, from the way he slouched into the taxi, simply barking out the part of town he wanted to go to without a please or thank you, and how he immediately started eating his kebab in the backseat without even asking my permission. Simply put, he was a horrible dickhead.
When we got to where he lived, he paid the exact fare, not a penny more, not a penny less, and slouched off to his house. Incidentally I never expect a tip, so I expect this was just par for the course for the individual in the back of my car.
I was quite relieved that the journey was over as you can imagine.
As he walked away I casually looked over my left shoulder and spotted the mayonnaise drizzled blue takeaway fork on the back seat. Once again, it was no surprise to see it there.
As this was my last job and I was heading to ASDA to do a bit of shopping before I went home, I just drove off with the blue fork on the backseat. I would dispose of it when I got there.
When I got to ASDA I opened the back door to remove the blue fork, and was fairly unsurprised to see the abandoned kebab on the floor beneath where my passenger had been sitting.
Muttering something under my breath expressing my opinion of my passenger, I closed the kebab box and removed it from the floor of my taxi.
It was at this point that I noticed a long, flat, oil stained, brown paper bag beneath where the kebab box had formerly been.
I observed that the paper bag was quite warm so I slid the contents out to discover a couple of rather gorgeous looking onion bhajis nestled in a polystyrene tray.
Rejoicing in the positive turnaround of events, I climbed back into the front seat of the taxi with the onion bhajis, with the intention of enjoying the fuck out of them.
The first onion bhaji went down a storm. Crispy and warm with just the right amount of internal moistness with a feathery texture, I was feeling quite pleased with myself.
Raising the second onion bhaji to my mouth I noticed that it looked a little different to the first one, with a slightly different colour nearer to light brown than gold, with a marginally different surface texture. Perhaps it was a different type of onion bhaji?
As I bit down I noticed how softer the second onion bhaji was. Around the same time, my tongue informed me that I had bitten into the surface of the sun, taste wise.
The second onion bhaji was fucking HOT. Like a vindaloo or a phal curry.
After drinking a litre and a half of pop to extinguish the inferno in my mouth I disposed of the second kebab rather than attempting to eat it.
I can only conclude that my passenger had similarly pissed off the people in the kebab shop, so they left him a little present, in the form of a “modified” onion bhaji. Modified with the hottest curry paste on Earth.
Before I disposed of the onion bhaji I broke it in half to discover that there was quite a lot of brown curry paste mixed in with the ingredients.
Unfortunately due to the level of alcohol he’d probably consumed he had forgotten about his onion bhajis so the karma that was headed his way ended up in my mouth.
But that first onion bhaji was fit.
I picked up two gentlemen from a rock pub in Morecambe. One of them was quite sober (Mr S) and chatty, the other it quickly became apparent, was utterly and completely wasted (Mr W).
I could tell Mr W was in quite a state because the only conversation his comparatively sober friend was getting from him were grunts, burps, and the odd random – “GARGGHH!”
Mr S got dropped off first, paid his contribution up to that point (£6) and left me in the scintillating company of Mr I.M. Wasted, Esquire as we continued our journey to Lancaster.
During the journey, Mr W achieved the following goals:
We finally arrived at our destination, a street of lovely old houses facing Lancaster Castle (which I have yet to visit.)
The fare had advanced another £13 so I woke up Mr W, and thus began the debacle of trying to get him to pay his fare.
He looked in both of his wallets (I could only see one wallet,) fished out his debit card and I passed over my card reader (as he did not have contactless payment.)
On the screen of my phone I could see that his PIN consisted of 7, 5, 3 and 9 digits, until he finally keyed in the correct 4 digit PIN, and his card was declined. I wasn’t frustrated at all, honestly.
The nearest ATM was the Spar on The Marsh, which is about a mile downhill from The Castle.
As you can see, the ATM is on the left. There are bollards, a bin, and left of the ATM is a drainpipe.
Mr W put his card in the machine, tripped on the bollard to the left of him, and managed to wedge himself next to the drainpipe. I imagine he looked a bit like this:
That’s right, my friends, once wedged in, he had a little nap. I reversed my car a little so I could watch the ATM give up waiting for his PIN, and swallow his card.
Finally he awoke, flipped out his willy and started messily pissing into the corner.
At this point I’m afraid I had run out of patience.
So I left him. I cut my losses and drove off. He was too busy pissing to notice. I imagined him attempting to drunkenly climb the various steep gradients during his walk home. Maybe fall asleep in a garden. Get pissed on by a dog.
Half an hour later the guilt started to kick in about leaving him stranded, and that Karma would pay me a visit at some point.
My next passenger was really lovely and gave me a £15 tip.
The Dave Price Blog 