I Have A Specific Number Of Problems
1. Romantically, no one has loved me as much as I’ve loved them, and vice versa.
2. Electrical surges will intermittently run through my right shin.
3. I’m not friends with anyone in the lit community.
4. I often delete tweets to make it seem as though I don’t use Twitter as much as I do.
5. My gums are receding.
6. Last summer I popped a large pimple on my stomach last summer and it left behind a weird scar.
7. I am most attracted to unattainable members of the opposite sex.
8. All writing feels like a waste of time and I’m writing this.
9. I downloaded iOS7.
10. I’ve had the thought, “It’d be nice to lose about 10lbs” every day for over three years now.
11. I get sea-sick, with even the slightest of waves.
12. I’m never sure if I’m using the phrase ‘mutually exclusive’ correctly.
13. My downstairs neighbors have a dog that barks at early hours of the morning.
14. My downstairs neighbors are two unattainable members of the opposite sex and when I see them they make me wonder why I’ve never had someone like either of them in my life.
15. There is rust in my bathtub.
16. I do not believe in God but everyone else in my family does.
17. I have never seen the 3-D image in a Magic Eye poster
18. When I change my Gchat color to green, I often don’t get any chat boxes popping up.
19. I will never have time to read most books.
20. The local art/lit scene has people I want to sleep with but I don’t know any of those people and I don’t like being part of scenes so I don’t know how I will ever get to sleep with any of them.
21. I was a devout Christian during my sexual peak and lost out on critical learning opportunities.
22. Hobart rejected my story.
23. Believer rejected my essay.
23. McSweeney’s hasn’t got back to me.
24. My thighs and calves are too thick to wear skinny jeans.
25. To a debilitating extent, I think about how I want to quit my job.
26. Trimming my back hair is difficult without a partner
27. There’s a novel called Richard Yates and so I now have to tell people I mean the author not the novel, or vice versa.
28. Armpit hair is better than no armpit hair but it is hard to find a woman with such a belief.
29. My novels are unpublished.
30. A podcast would be good but I can’t conceive of a universe where I would have time to make one.
31. I make too many excuses.
32. A large majority of my missed calls are from my parents.
33. I don’t have a wife.
34. I’ve never had a threesome and I’m only getting older and I don’t want a swinger party threesome.
35. My head has a similar shape to E.T.’s head.
36. Often I give my unread writing to people I want to sleep with.
38. I will never be with almost every person I will ever want to be with.
39. Even though I’ve been told I look like Tobey Maguire and Gerard Butler, I’ve also been told I look like Quentin Tarantino and Michael Chiklis.
40. I should have already moved to New York.
41. I still like that “Thrift Shop” song.
42. I don’t have an opinion on Miley Cyrus.
43. I don’t the remember the names of more people I’ve kissed than I remember the names of people I’ve kissed.
44. No one has ever told me the real reason for why they broke things off.
45. My car’s steering has a slight skew to the left.
46. I use iTunes.
47. I buy clothes from H&M and each time I do I believe those clothes will last longer than a few weeks.
48. I’ll never marry Jenny Slate.
49. I’m only halfway through this.
50. I judge anyone who posts anything on the internet.
51. I don’t know what my greatest accomplishment in life would be.
52. If my life depended on it, I could not balance an equation.
53. Outside of my family, I have never told anyone I love them, and vice versa.
54. I am separated from every person who has ever modeled for MeInMyPlace.
55. I cannot afford fresh dragonfruit from Whole Foods.
56. When wearing headphones, the speaker volume through my computer goes just below the loudness I’d like it to go to.
57. My boss’ boss often walks through my work area but neither of us have anything to say to one another and we both know this and yet every time she walks through she wants to say hi and so every time we have a good twenty seconds before she walks up where we awkwardly smile at each other until she gets close enough to where it’s appropriate to say hi and this happens almost every single day.
58. When writing, I need music playing, but I need something familiar. Because of this, I’ve cornered myself into listening to the same album over and over and over.
59. I’m already too old to become a great tennis player.
60. I don’t look good in a hat.
61. My favorite baseball team relies on players who “do the little things right.”
62. With Instagram, I often think, “Well, that’ll be there tomorrow” and so I don’t post very often and so I will never get more followers.
63. The tenses of lay v. lie still confuse me.
64. My toilet seat is too small for my butt and so I have to half stand to wipe.
65. Every time I look at my OkCupid profile, I am reminded of everything wrong about my life and yet I can’t delete it.
66. Finding a flattering angle when taking pictures of my penis is difficult.
67. Unless I have it waxed, my back hair is perceptible to the touch, and so I am acutely afraid a woman will ask me about it.
68. I don’t program names in my phone, preparing myself for when I’ll lose touch with, or am let go by, the person connected to the number, and so I always have to look up the number in my phone’s history instead of conveniently using a programmed name.
69. I don’t know how to do most drugs.
70. I resent most people I see in bookstores and yet I want to be a person who makes the things those people will buy.
71. I’ve never had a relationship last longer than six months.
72. My left eye is lazy.
73. I don’t know ever know if I’m ‘doing it’ right.
74. I could die before I know how Game of Thrones ends.
76. Google Analytics won’t filter out the hits from my own computer.
77. Even though I know she and I are not meant for each other, I have dreams which center around an ex-girlfriend and how it would be nice to have a place, even it’s imaginary, where I can be with her.
78. Immediately after I post a tweet, I think of a better way of wording that tweet.
79. I actually believe I could have been a major league baseball player and the only reason I am not is because I was not given the right opportunities as a youth.
80. On social media, I am incapable of following anyone who does not follow me first.
81. I fall for members of the opposite sex too easily.
82. But if someone I fall for does happen to fall for me and we have children they might have all these problems.
83. I look better in glasses but my eyesight is perfect.
84. I have trouble peeing next to strangers.
85. I sabotaged my best chance at a lasting and happy relationship.
86. I can’t detect hidden meanings within Faulkner novels.
87. I sometimes have diarrhea because I don’t eat healthily enough.
88. If I see a woman with an even slightly above average bottom, I get hopelessly sad knowing I will never touch it.
89. I’ll never be happy for more than 40 or 50 minutes consecutively.
90. I cannot grasp the idea behind NeverEnding Story.
91. I’m in my thirties and no one has heard of me and I don’t know Terry Richardson
92. I am jealous of any writer who gains positive attention.
93. I have to sit on my couch a certain way otherwise the wood cracks
94. I don’t get as many RTs as I once imagined I would.
95. I am so tired of this and yet I have to think of four more problems about my speck of a life.
96. Woody Allen won’t release his films on The Criterion Collection.
97. My fantasy football team is very bad.
98. No one will ever love me the way I want them to love me.
99. I wrote this.