By Lottie Leech
- Find time for self-care. Allot at least three 15-minute intervals a day to comfy nest building around your living area. Get creative with supplies like blankets, shrouds, coffins and pillows! Disperse these evenly throughout your space for fast accessibility.
- Make a love connection. Try spending plenty of time staring at the read symbol on your quadruple text to your current idealised crush. Remember, they want you so bad! Go get ‘em tiger.
- If applicable: get a hysterectomy. Never have a period again. If anyone condescendingly says “It’s all those hormones, I was just the same at your age” make sure to rip their eyes out.
- Keep up to date with the news, but only the ones on the Google search homepage, that’s the most important news bulletin. (Aberdeenshire man stuffs 4 golf balls in mouth, Breaking News: Scottish weather is bad, NorthLink Ferry sprouts wings in rough crossing).
- Drink tea. If you don’t like tea, try drinking from the fountain of youth, fabled to be lurking somewhere in the Cruikshank Botanical Garden.
- Keep up with creative pursuits. Your garden gnome building workshop is just around the corner from the garden gnome big leagues!
- Exercise regularly. In the gym (Pros: lots of mirrors to stare at yourself. Cons: the mortifying ordeal of being perceived struggling with the smallest weights.) or outside in nature (Pros: cute dogs. Cons: Aberdeen drivers.)
- Start your mornings with a calming ritual. Jumping out of bed at 8:45am for a 20-minute walk to your 9am lecture is the best way to start the day calm and collected. Staving off those grey hairs will aid in your quest for immortality.
- Live in the moment. Note: an integral part of this strategy is if you ever find yourself not living in the moment, immediately start berating yourself for this until you’ve succeeded in putting yourself in a worse mood than you started.
- Avoid negative self-talk. Try this calming mantra: ‘Everyone hates me and I am unproductive and lazy. This sucks and so do I’. If this is unsuccessful, remind yourself no one has ever had it as tough as you and no one will ever understand you. Third line advice is to go for a walk.
- Try to bring something you find beautiful into your daily life (small dolls of those who have wronged you made from collected strands of their hair, seagull feathers worn as a bandolier, a large glowering oil portrait of Jim Carrey’s Count Olaf).
- Keep up to date on work. Staring aimlessly into the middle distance and scrolling through your phone are all part of the process. Always remember, if you don’t start you can’t fail! For maximum longevity of life remember you need at least 3 naps a day, according to science.
- Accepting criticism. Don’t do it ever.
- Hang out with friends. A brief respite from common sense in your own personal echo chamber of delusion is an important part of the day.
- Eat healthy and stay hydrated. These can be accomplished simultaneously by sipping water directly from Aberdeen Harbour while nibbling on any gum you find on the pavement. Do this once a day for 2 weeks and you may combine enough species in your stomach to start your own supervirus (it’s worth a shot).