.SOMETIMES RAW.

What’s your name? How tall are you? Have you been feeling any dizziness or fatigue lately? Are you bipolar? Getting to know the real you is about asking yourself lots of questions. Much better questions than these.

It’s about exploring your strengths and weaknesses. Are you a good shooter? If not, then that’s a weakness. How about swimming or jogging? Hopefully one of those is a yes or you start to look like a nightmare.

Becoming self-aware may mean discovering aspects of yourself that you didn’t notice before, like, that you’re divorced or single. But amidst all the positives, there is always the risk that you could end up liking yourself less. This happens rarely, but when it does, boy, is sucks.

You might think you know yourself, but how about the time in that restaurant when you were so sure you wanted the salmon, then spit it right out of your mouth? Or the time you bought that expensive shirt then spit it out of your mouth? That doesn’t sound like someone who knows themselves very well or who understands what’s supposed to go in their mouth.

According to the renowned German psychologist Erick Erickson, people who lack self-awareness are experiencing an “identity crisis,” a condition that comes about when the person you think you are is different than the person you truly are. This happens a lot when you catch a glimpse of your Best Buy name tag.

Self-awareness can often be the gateway to personal change. If you want to quit smoking, for example, you have to know that you’re a smoker first, so look down at your hand and see if there’s a cigarette there. If not, then what is that in your hand? A gun? What are you, some kind of murderer?

Only when you truly know who you are will you feel the sense of freedom to mock others. Someone might walk funny, for example, but before you can safely mock him, it’s important to know for sure that you don’t walk funny, too. Once you’re clear, let ’em have it.

Looking through old photos can be a great window into your relationships—a big piece of the self-awareness puzzle. Study the body language of the people in the photos with you. Do they seem to like you, or are they glaring at you and hitting you? Are there any pictures of you water rafting or snowboarding? This can be a huge help in determining whether or not you like doing that.

Try writing your obituary. Do you know yourself well enough to write about your life, or do you keep getting facts wrong? Are you even sad that you died? Because you sure aren’t acting like it.

Look into a mirror and say hello to yourself. Did you say anything back or just leave yourself hanging? Try smiling, now frown, now look frightened, now embarrassed, now shocked like you just got slapped by someone. Do any of these emotions feel natural to you? Try walking away from the mirror, then sneaking up on yourself. Is your first reaction, “Oh, there I am”? Or is it, “Who the hell’s this Chinese lady?”

Install a mirror above your bed so the first thing you see every morning is you. Use the little camera in the mirror to film yourself having sex with someone, then post it on the Internet. Check the comments section to see if people are generally pretty positive. If so, then someone may have just found that strength he was looking for.

Remember, achieving self-awareness is a process. Even with all the mirrors and sex videos, the path is rarely clear, but rather lined with mirages of our false selves. Each of us plays so many different roles in our lives: You might be a wife, husband, father, brother, son, daughter, boss, hungdaddy9999, and a soccer mom all at the same time—so which “self” is the real you? It’s difficult to say, but fingers crossed it’s not the porny one.

With this being said, my friends, I wish you a Happy New Year. Thank you for reading my stuff. Live, Laugh, Love! All the best for 2023.

Do you own a car? Do you have kids? Do you like road trips? Do you want a car that does not look like a nuclear meltdown after your kid(s) get out? Then please read on.

Multitasking is hard enough on its own but eating while driving is in a whole different league. The same insane league as driving while your kid(s) are hungry and need to eat. A sticky league. A crumbly league. Lucky for you, I have a son who loves car rides, is also hungry all the time and wants to eat in the car so I am an expert on car eating advice for kids and adults alike. I am not a “BMW-driver-who-does-not-let-anybody-eat-anything-in-my-car-because-the-car-is-so-fucking-fancy-expensive-and-designed-with-leather-interior-that-cost-an-extra-4000 euro”- person and my child is allowed to eat in the car. Because I eat in the car. While driving. Not spaghetti-seafood-lasagna previously preheated in the microwave before we leave the house, but a chocolate croissant is definitely a possibility.

Also lucky for you, I (either driver or in the passenger seat) will answer some questions my son has about eating food in the car. And there are lots of them.

How far should the passenger go in helping the driver eat?
It’s never too far to feed the driver, especially when there are nuggets in need of a dip in honey mustard. As the passenger, I’ll do whatever it takes to keep both those hands on the wheel. Another nugget? Feeding suggestions: Gummi bears, an apple, sausages, and a sandwich.

Is it okay to spit my cherry pits out the window?
Depends which direction the wind is blowing, but why not spit them into an old plastic cup like it’s a spittoon and you’re a hardened brothel madam who’s seen things she can’t unsee? That’s my go-to persona when eating cherries. Then dump the pit cup in the garbage at the gas station—they take forever to decompose.

Am I the only one eating sushi with chopsticks?
You’re not! It’s compact and bite-size, and the soy sauce splatter blends perfectly with synthetic leather interiors.

Is it acceptable to peel and eat hard-boiled eggs?
No. Danger. Peel the egg before you go and eat it then too so you can sprinkle fresh salt on every bite. I love car food, but sometimes I wonder if our delusions of efficiency begin to cloud the simple joys of reality. Eat that cold, wobbly egg like you should, over the kitchen sink. You don’t always have to multitask.

When eating in the car, what’s your table: the passenger seat, the dashboard, or the center console?
What kind of roast chicken feast are you eating in your vehicle? Your LAP is the table, my friend, so get to work on those quads, they’ve got a burrito bowl to uphold. If you must get elaborate, let’s buy a 12 Euro steering wheel desk on Amazon. They’re practical and a little depressing, like the job that requires you to eat in your car. Use while parked only.

Is there a food category we need to ban from the car?
There’s something about chips dust, and intact Cheerios about to be crushed into dust, that makes me feel they should be banned. But apparently, kids must eat to stay alive, so that ban is going nowhere fast. Like me behind the wheel.

What to do about car crumbs?
I have floor mats in the car. My car is always coated in something. I say let the crumbs fly, and when the need arises, just hose down everything.

Taxi drivers frown upon eating while riding. But what if I get really hungry?
Usually, no snackin’ in the cab. I once asked my cab driver in New York, Myles (no joke), whether I could eat in his car and the next thing I knew, he was divulging one of his darkest secrets: a curiosity for the taste of human flesh. Suddenly, the restaurant he took me to and where I was eating the food was harder to swallow than usual.

So, overall, avoid MESSY, SLIMY, AND SMELLY, FOOD in the car.

What are the best snacks that create the least mess? (everything MUST be in a Tupperware container!)

• Cereal bars
• Sliced carrots, and cucumbers.
• Presliced apples but NEVER raspberries
• Fruit & Go Squeezers (though other issues may arise)
• Grapes
• Apples
• Swedish Fish/non-sour gummies
• Pretzels
• Cheese Sandwich

This will get you and your child(ren) safe from A to B without you losing your f***ing mind. Do you need more?

Read my article on smelly food on the subway.

Do you feel that chill in the air? Do you see those leaves gently gliding down from their branches to pile up and decompose together? Do you hear that bubbling sound of some vegetables, meat, and broth simmering together? That’s right, it’s Soup Season, and I won’t let you forget it until the jingling sleigh bells of Christmas forces me to radically alter my personality again.

You may remember me as the person who got really into grilling this past summer, the person who wouldn’t shut up about plants last spring, or the person who hates the Winter Olympics. Now it is time for me to become completely insufferable and into soup, with a brief pause to go into some filthy details about proper “Gansl” roasting in November.

The world seems to be in complete chaos at this point. It is more important to gender and differentiate everybody and everything in the LGTBQ+ community while I cry myself to sleep at night thinking about gas prices and skyrocketing electricity bills. At this point, I think of that as a delightful Parmesan cheese garnish on the butternut squash soup that is my new autumnal lifestyle. When I get home, I leave all this insanity outside and cook myself into my own little food heaven.

Did I hear you sniffle? Don’t deny it, now you are going to get approximately twenty servings of chicken noodle soup, but I replaced the chicken with mushrooms, the noodles with beans, and the chicken broth with a flavourless vegetable stock that I made with veggies that by all rights should have been composted long ago. It is a family recipe. If I say that enough, it becomes true.

Oh, you broke your leg? Well, a hearty stew should help with that. Stew is like soup, only I save money because I can just throw in all that bulk steak I bought last summer during my Grill Phase. It has been in my freezer long enough to earn tenure, but some cultures love to age their beef, so this stew is actually rather exotic if you think about it.

Are you going through a divorce? Now it is a bit bad of me, but I just made a big pot of Italian wedding soup, so why don’t you swing by my house for a glass of wine and a big bowl of soup? I recently managed to imprison the ghost of Joseph Albert Campbell, founder of Campbell’s soup company, in my kitchen so we can get a bit rowdy and chase him around for a bit.

I would love to talk more, but my bulk order of chicken bones is about to come in. If you want some stock, just let me know; I have two chest freezers at work filled with the stuff. You’ll have to move quickly, though. Once the dulcet tones of Mariah Carey fill the supermarket air, I will completely forget everything I know about soup in favour of exceedingly elaborate tree and house decorations, painstakingly crafted gingerbread houses, and presents that you will just love (based entirely on the one piece of information about you that is stored in my brain in a sort of panic room, endlessly attempting to stay alive against the onslaught of seasonal personality shifts). Or like simple parenting is an oxymoron.