Dawning on the USA

Smug bastard cycles to work

Employees at a firm in London express their outrage as their smug bastard colleague cycles to work for the third time this week.

Fifty-two-year-old Chris Davis favours arriving at the office sinewy, weather-beaten and lycra-clad for the sole purpose of making everyone feel bad about themselves, the employees speculate. Sheeted in sweat, Chris appears at the office entrance doing high-knees to stop his heart rate from falling, before clapping his hands together and yelling "Who’s pumped!" at his sluggish subordinates.

'He walks around with the bravado and flush of someone who’s just got laid,' data analyst John comments. 'He does his lunges in the office kitchen, still out of breath, with the sated, self-satisfied look of a uni student swaggering to the communal fridge in his underwear. I’m almost expecting a woman in a bathrobe to follow behind and urge him to come back to bed.'

'He asks me how my morning has been, but it’s just a ploy so he can talk about his,' Kate explains. ' "What were you doing at 5:30 this morning?" he asks, knowing full well that I was asleep with last night’s makeup forming a flaky crust on my face. He then goes on to tell me how he was up doing his tantric breathing exercises and welcoming the sunrise. He uses a different adjective to describe the sunrise everyday. This morning it was "transcendent."'

Chris’s irritating lifestyle choices have also extended to his eating habits. 'How has this somehow become my problem?' secretary Ella laments, describing how Chris joylessly raises his blood sugar with a banana at 9am, before conspicuously eating nothing until a protein bar at 12. Ella describes being held verbally hostage as he regurgitates an article he read on metabolism last night, urging her to take up Pilates to "become her best self".'

'He's handling the divorce about as well as you would expect.'

Image: Gonzalo Facello (@gonchifacello) | Unsplash Photo Community

Man Finds Inner Strength to End Self-Improvement Journey and Accept Being Sack of Sh*t

After struggling through an arduous and exhausting self-improvement journey that involved trying to learn new things as well as experimenting with hobbies that left him feeling highly fatigued and ultimately unfulfilled, Nathan Winters, 47, officially declared that he has reached the end of his 4-day long attempt to improve himself as a human being.

Nathan's fragmented and unfocused goals came to an abrupt conclusion last week when he had the epiphany that he should be more accepting of himself and his limitations while allowing things to take their natural course.

"I realized I was fighting a mid-life crisis, and that's why I was engaging in all these crazy and pointless activities like jogging, riding a bicycle to work, obtaining a gym membership, maintaining a balanced diet, reading books, socializing with other people, and participating in community events," Nathan confessed.

Immediately after explaining how he finally found the inner strength to throw away the self-help literature he was reading and resume the nightly consumption of alcohol that has suited him quite well for the past 25 years, Nathan made it a sincere point to add the words, "F*ck That Sh*t!"

Satisfied that his time-consuming struggle for self-actualization has finally ended with the realization that trying to change himself was the wrong thing to do, the 47-year-old happily concluded that he will make a triumphant return to being a mediocre sack of shit immediately after he wakes up on the kitchen floor of his house surrounded by crushed beer cans and half-consumed bottles of liquor.

Photo by the blowup on Unsplash