Give Up Nothing. My NY advice

It’s so interesting, isn’t it, to meet someone who not only navel gazes but gets right in there? Beneath the navel. I mean the type of person who thinks you might be enthralled to know all about their intestinal flora, the good and bad bacteria in their gut, how they have improved their microbiome by eating horrible mouldy foods and now avoids anything actually delicious.

This is what I leave my house for these days. To meet people who are better than me in every possible way and want to tell me about it.

In fact, I cannot avoid it because the entire culture of self-improvement seeps out of every Instagram post, every other article or TV show. There is not one part of me or my life that could not be improved – as anyone who knows me will attest – but then I have an allergy to the banal solipsism that passes for “advice”.

Half of the inspirational quotes I see on Facebook inspire murderous thoughts in me as they are often attributed to the wrong person. Education, truth and accuracy do not seem to figure much in the current avalanche of self-help bunkum.