How to describe the moment I decided that I would Do Something I Wouldn’t Normally Do For A Period Of Time? There I was, Doing Something I Would Normally Do, when I thought, hey, why not Do Something I Wouldn’t Normally Do instead? So I got out of my comfortable bubble and I Did Something I Wouldn’t Normally Do, For A Period Of Time. You won’t believe what happens next.
Have you ever thought about The Things You Normally Do? I hadn’t until now.
I’m sure you can all relate to my rhetorical question about the alienation Doing Things (especially Technology Things) causes in our Modern Lives. I would also like to quote an Established Thinker from a completely different era to lend myself the authority to undergo this seemingly questionable project in the name of Arriving At Greater Truths (which, dear readers, I imply that you will find in this Article if you will keep scrolling past our interstitial ads).
Here I’ll provide a lengthy, banal description of the Thing I Normally Do, interspersed with commentary about just how Inane or Outright Weird this Seemingly Normal Thing To Do is. And yet we all do it. How could I be the first to notice this?
Doing Something I Wouldn’t Normally Do was different than Doing What I Would Normally Do. Sometimes it was hard. Sometimes it was pleasant, because it made me delight in Simple Pleasures that I might not have enjoyed over this Period Of Time otherwise. Like manual labor, when Doing Something Different Than I Would Normally Do was hard, it was actually rewarding. I appeal to my readers’ desire to find pleasant and rewarding things to do, as if this is an option they have never considered for themselves.
The benefits of Doing Something I Wouldn’t Normally Do were varied and, to a fault, illuminating. No aspect of Doing Something I Wouldn’t Normally Do was a wasted effort, or a vanity project (1). In fact, Doing Something I Wouldn’t Normally Do resulted in a number of extremely interesting revelations.
For example, thanks to Doing Something I Wouldn’t Normally Do, I realized that we live in a Society. What’s more, did you ever realize that it is a Capitalist Society? And that a lot of Things You Would Normally Do revolve around participating in a Capitalist Society? This is very troubling! But wait, this is also the Information Age. Allow me to use some statistics I researched (provided courtesy of the parts of Society that want you to consume information—are you seeing a pattern yet?) to show the rates at which people Do The Things You Usually Do. These statistics are doubly troubling. Whatever happened to the Good Old Days, when What You Would Normally Do was something different?
Thanks to my Period of Time Doing Something I Wouldn’t Normally Do, I realized that the way we interact with each other is Weird When You Think About It and Definitely Caused By Larger Forces At Work in Society (2). If everyone would Do Something They Wouldn’t Normally Do, then society would almost certainly be different. The inescapable conclusion is that Doing What You Would Normally Do is existentially horrible (as if there is any state of being on this godforsaken plane of consciousness that isn’t existentially horrible).
Yes, life is existentially horrible, but most importantly, thanks to Doing Something I Wouldn’t Normally Do For A Period of Time, I Learned Something that could Change The World. I don’t mean Obama 2012 Change, I mean actually Meaningful, Profound Change. I’m talking about Love. And Peace. Which we should have more of. We could be shifting the entire paradigm, to whatever we’re calling paradigm shifting these days. These are the noblest things that we mere humans can do, and we don’t do them normally enough.
Because I am a humble person, I will acknowledge that I owe my success to the great pioneers of Doing Something You Wouldn’t Normally Do For A Period of Time and Getting Paid To Write About It: Danny Wallace of Yes Man (Now A Major Motion Picture Starring Jim Carrey), A.J. Jacobs of The Year of Living Biblically, and Elizabeth Gilbert of Eat Pray Love (for whom my hatred is eclipsed only by my extreme jealousy).
Without these pioneers, would we ever Do Something We Wouldn’t Normally Do For A Period of Time, let alone write articles about it? I can only hope that one day the many Periods of Time spent honing my capacity for Doing Things I Wouldn’t Normally Do, then writing articles about it and Posting them to Social Media Sites Which Do Not Pay Their Writers (3) will result in a lucrative book deal with one of the Big 6 5 publishers.
Of course, any and all Doing Something I Wouldn’t Normally Do must come to an end. After all, if I continued to Do Something I Wouldn’t Normally Do past the allotted Period of Time, it would become the very Thing I Normally Do. And I can’t write an article about that, can I?
In conclusion: Doing Things I Would Normally Do is existentially horrible, whereas Doing Something I Wouldn’t Normally Do For A Period Of Time has brought me great insight into What It Is All About These Days Anyway. I hope you feel the same, and click the “like” and “share” buttons below to announce that you Read An Article to the world, or at the very least to your family and acquaintance groups.
Click here for the next in my 12-part series: I will NOT Do Something I WOULD Normally Do, For A Period of Time. Is your mind not blown?
*
1. I acknowledge my long-suffering spouse was present for this Period of Time, but only in the footnotes, and only as a cheap gendered joke.
2. I might make a mention of some of those forces using the adjective “Big” to modify an otherwise innocuous industry noun, but dwelling on this would inevitably lead to the conclusion that we need Systematic Change, which is very difficult to enact and also Existentially Horrible to consider.
3. Current publication excluded.
Tags: claire blechman, humor, the internet, tropes, writing
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I am a paleo crafter currently travelling the Pacific Northwest in the yurt I knitted out of my DH’s beard trimmings, and we’ve been doing That Thing You Don’t Normally Do for years, the way nature intended. It just feels so much more natural, you know?
The words “the yurt I knitted out of my DH’s beard trimmings” are going to haunt me in my deepest, darkest, most disgusting nightmares!*
But thanks to Nicole’s even more terrifying article on umbilical-cord-biting, placenta-chewing, lung-formation-intuiting mothers-to-be, I actually know what what DH is. Ha!
*Good thing I never have nightmares. 😉
I seriously may never recover from that article. My heart was racing the entire day after that.
what, you didn’t SPIN your DH’s beard trimmings into YARN before knitting it into a yurt?
pft
amateur
Footnote 2 made my day so much better.
(as if there is any state of being on this godforsaken plane of consciousness that isn’t existentially horrible)
this is the realest parenthetical, and should be included on all Articles about Subjects, henceforth
Yes, I think we could definitely just replace everything currently in print with this sentence and we’d all be a lot happier/more terrified.
It definitely lends a whole new light to all of them if you just use it as a subtitle for anything by Gilbert or Jacobs or whoever.
“My Year of Cooking with Julia: as if there is any state of being on this godforsaken plane of concsiousness that isn’t existentially horrible”
The Happiness Project: as if there is any state of being on this godforsaken plane of concsiousness that isn’t existentially horrible (By Gretchen Rubin)
A Year by the Sea: as if there is any state of being on this godforsaken plane of concsiousness that isn’t existentially horrible (Joan Anderson)
I miss Alex Balk.
oh god me too [insert clever link tag text here]
Big data, world is flat, 10,000 hours. yada yada yada
I am a Man, and I am White, and I have realized that possibly not everyone experiences things as a White Man??
ETA: Just kidding, no male author ever comes to that conclusion.
They come to the conclusion that it’s totally easy being a Non White Non Man because they did it for like a day so I mean, come on, how hard could it be, stop whining and looking for things to get upset about and learn to take a joke, sheesh.
Yeah, similarly, us white dudes usually find 1 way that other non-white or non-dudes have it better (only in the face of the slightest criticism) and that throws all inequality out the window, like, every woman can have sex with whoever they want–anywhere anytime. <–Besides being false, this tired “observation” by men has always bugged me for many reasons. I mean, it’s funny when women own that idea and kinda flip it like, yeah dudes, you are gross nobody wants you and everyone wants this. But really, most dudes who spout this notion are being self-defeatist, which is funny at times but no way to seriously be when it comes to sex. I’m not even going to touch all the other ways that it’s irksome or twisted.
Footnote #1 is particularly fun if you think about it in the context of those people whose Thing They Didn’t Normally Do was have sex every single day. (I’m not making those people up, I’m sure of it?)
You are not making them up. I forget how we stumbled on it but some friends and I have basically fallen in love with this lady and worship her as if she were a religious deity. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brittany-gibbons/i-…
You are not.
Is this a template sent out to every new xoJane writer?
+ Slate. Yes.
This article is perfect, and you are perfect.
Adding this early review to my blurbs
I just want to put ‘Big’ in front of everything now. Roadworks on commute? Big Construction are at it again, man. Lunch not great? Big Deli messing things up for the little guy.
This article is SO TRUE and I am definitely switching to Something I Normally Wouldn’t Do from now on (at least until later today when the truths and experiences of having read this have evaporated, leaving only the faintest whisps of remembrance behind. Until then, Fundamental Truth.)
Um, in actuality, if you read This Book By A Pseudo Intellectual, it proves the article writer is wrong and you are wrong for agreeing with them. Actually I have somehow fundamentally misunderstood your three line comment, so this comment is nonsensical. You’re a hippie, go USA
Yes, I’m a huge sucker for metafiction/meta-writing, but that doesn’t mean that this wasn’t executed perfectly and hilariously. Mind=blown.
This is a thing of beauty and I unwisely started reading just as I was taking a drink of water. This comment would be longer except that I have to clean up a spray of water now. 10/10 please continue writing.
WAKE UP, SHEEPLE! THE THINGS YOU NORMALLY DO ARE KILLING YOU!
Why hasn’t everyone realized it’s so much better to Do Something You Normally Wouldn’t Do Which Doctors Strongly Recommend Never, Ever, Doing???? like my god, if you want the kinds of side effects that come from Doing What You Normally Do Which Is Widely Considered Safe, just go ahead and inject a Toxic Substance directly into your arteries!!!
<img src="http://pearnuallak.com/food/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/iamfeeluncomfortable.jpg">
This comment is late, but appreciates the insight so that I don’t have to Do Something I Wouldn’t Normally Do For A Period of Time.
As someone who rolled her eyes quite hard at The Happiness Project, I enjoyed this article very much.
As someone who rolled her eyes quite hard at The Happiness Project, I enjoyed this article very much.
If I have to read ONE MORE “I gave up my phone for a minute and noticed that there are birds and other humans” article, man…
You know that one obnoxious young relative on Facebook who drives the family crazy, shitting on their live/laugh/love link shares by always replying with a relevant Onion or Clickhole-style article aimed to skewer the exact nugget of warm suburban zeitgeist everyone else is trying to enjoy?
I am that relative. This piece is invaluable to me.
And The Article becomes A Blog and The Blog becomes A Book and The Book becomes A Movie and The Movie becomes A Lifestyle Guide and The Lifestyle Guide becomes An SNL Punchline and soon there is A New Article written to subvert The Previous Article which has (ironically) become Something that Everyone is Now Doing.
(this is a very comfortable ouroboros, please come join us!)
what, you didn't SPIN your DH's beard trimmings into YARN before knitting it into a yurt?
pft
amateur
This is my greatest aspiration for this article.