I find myself relating in many ways to writer Jenny Lawson, aka “The Bloggess.”
Having just finished “Fabulously Happy,” and having read her first book “Let’s Pretend This Never Happened,” I’m hard pressed to think of a more odd character in any book when comparing said character to Lawson is as her natural self.
While only relating to an extent on the mental illness side of things — I combat and take medication for depression — the jumbled mess that is her mind is something that I identify with immensely.
Lawson is the odd ball in every social situation and with her loved ones, something that I’m sure many of my friends would say about me.
The dingus dork side of me really only comes out around close personal friends and those who have shown themselves to accept my derpidity (that’s right, we’re making up words now).
For Lawson, she’s the odd one out at all times, and of her numerous mental illness-related social spasms, she writes endearingly of the people who share the same problems while somehow still expressing the horrors that fill her mind.
Sure, she jokes about slinking under a table at dinner, something that her social awkwardness causes to bring her to nearly physical pains of discomfort, but she writes about it in a way that lets the reader know that:
A. It’s OK to smile and relate to the things that plague her, and B. You’re not alone if you’re that weirdo.
Sometimes Lawson will be on the road for work related to her writing and she finds herself locking herself in her hotel room, hoping only for the dread and feelings that push her toward self-harm and self-deprecation attitudes to melt away.
Those aren’t things she can force from her mind. She has found that she can ride out the problems, embrace familial time and bonding and refer to readers who have in the past, shown her that she is far from alone in the way she skirts away from the world at-large sometimes.
That being said, the everyday encounters Lawson has with her husband, business associates (friends, publisher, editors, fellow writers) make every page a must-read. Lawson is not the type of writer that you find yourself just skimming, because you very well may miss something good.
You’ll miss the things that make Lawson embrace a new lifestyle of being furiously happy.
Some of those things, well, they just make you confused or double-take for sheer absurdity.
I used my Twitter page (@Kaleb_M_Carter) to cast out a call for random numbers. The first number was to be a line on the page, the second a page number. Based on those numbers, I chose corresponding passages in the book.
Such gems that were chosen thanks to the suggestion of my Twitter followers were:
- Go back and read it because it’s important and also you might find money in there.
- Why do you have all those fancy cat magazines in the lobby? Are those some sort of trap, or is it just some sort of profiling?
-The seven stages of sleep (according to my body).
- The problem was that by the time they swallowed their spoonful of soupsicle, the waiter was gone, causing all of them to stand in their elegant attire while holding a dirty spoon like a terrible, unwanted accessory.
- Now I’m taking pills in food form.
- Waking up shirtless with a bunch of concerned dogs staring at your bra because you’re afraid of coats is about the seventh way to wake up.
- You’re not crazy. STOP CALLING YOURSELF CRAZY my mom says for the eleventy-billionth time.
-My grandmother used to say “those are not the kind of underwear you want to get hit by a bus in.”
-My doctor assured me that staph-infection-of-the-head is easily treated and most likely won’t spread to my face, brain and body, but (just in case) I’ve been practicing using a cat for camouflage.
- Do you think that woman was thinking logically when she sent me a box of dead cats?
- I love that a special tribe of people understands and enjoys my writing and I am incredibly lucky to have found them.
- I fell in love with him the instant I saw him because he looked exactly like Rambo, the rescued, orphaned raccoon who lived in my bathtub when I was little.
- Just. You know. Most people die.
These were completely random. I did not choose them.
So as you can probably imagine, Lawson gets plenty more weird at times.
I’ve loved both of her books for these very reasons. Her brutal honesty, willingness to expose her darkest thoughts and such will ensure that I pick up every book she ever writes.
Now in form that I bet Lawson could relate to, I need to return this book, it’s five weeks overdue (oops).
Star rating out of 5: 4.75