A Vitalists Guide to Surviving the Holidays

The West is dead but you must learn to embrace the turning season, warrior!

If you’re like me, you may not have a perfectly normal relationship with your family. Perhaps you were kicked out of your home for being an autistic sociopath with strange ideas about industrial civilization and its consequences. Perhaps your parents got divorced and used you as a prop or even a psyop in their war against each other and themselves. Perhaps you just didn’t like the aesthetics of your middle-class upbringing because the furniture at your grandfathers house was uglier than the furniture you came across at the goth clubs you snuck into. Whatever the case, the holidays are here, and it is time to make the best out of it.

Be warned, readers of the extreme edge. This is a seasonal post that relates to the changing season, rather than a self-indulgent escape into a topic besides the holidays, where being stuck in your head would somehow be glorified! Such audacity is not appropriate in December, unless of course you are a celebrity or a street kid, and all the street kids have died now anyway so let’s get ready to strategically conform.

The Narrative that Needs to Change

Are you angry that the world is beginning to stop as you get slammed with more work? So am I! Are you upset that you have gained weight during the pandemic? So am I! Do you dislike social chameleons who weed their way into anything innovative and exciting only to kick out the most inspiring creators? So do I! Well here is the thing about this struggle of ours. We can all be angry together, but what does that lead to in the end? Your name on a list, honey. It’s time to figure out a better way forward. I’m going to give you some advice because, well, these days you need to give advice if you have a Substack column. With that being said, it is now time for my Vitalists Guide to Surviving the Holidays.

How are we going to get through this?

1. Write a musical or play. Rather than working freelance or seeking new venture capital, go wild and create something that absolutely nobody will ever pay you for. You’ll have a great time making it, and feel like you are on a holiday break, even if you don’t have a normal job. Nothing makes you feel more relaxed than doing something with no end goal in mind except for enjoying youreslf.

2. Start a Chanukah or Christmas event for misfits. I’ve been to many Misfit Chanukah and Christmas parties that were full of artists and musicians who I still talk to now. Whether your party is on Zoom or IRL, invite everyone who doesn’t have normal holiday plans. Vitalist Christmas Parties. Get on it.

3. Call up your family members and have a real talk with them. Even if you are completely estranged from your family, there are probably at least one or two family members that you see on Facebook. Call them up and talk about something simple that will make them laugh and feel good. Don’t ask for anything. Just strike up a small conversation. Bonjour! Good day! How is your mortgage? Bonjour! Good day! How is your second wife? I froze my eggs! That’s quite extensive! So happy that you lead a risk-free life!

4. Have a COVID theme party. Invite all of your friends, whether they are estranged from their family or not, to a COVID BLAST SUPER FAST SUPER WILD PANDEMIC PARTY. Go absolutely mad, making fun of the entire situation. Create a lockdown game for your friends to play online and off. Force everyone to wear ridiculous masks and speak through them. Have someone dress up like a government official and someone else dress up like a nurse. Surrealism is praxis, and I literally have no idea what praxis means. As long as someone wears a Santa hat you cannot go wrong.

5. Go for a Christmas run. Run! Run as fast as possible. Run through your whole town. Run a mile. Run two miles. Run five miles. You are running on Christmas, and you are beginning a new life. You’re gonna feel incredible, no matter what your family life is like. Keep running. Run some more!

6. Throw the best New Year's party ever and plan it ahead for it. No explanation needed. Everybody is busy with Christmas, so you better get ahead with your New Years Eve party game. Just don’t choose a Great Gatsby theme, because that is really overdone. Be original rather than originot. Work it, event producer!

7. Apologize to your family for everything you've ever done. If your family seems angry with you, send them some generic holiday cards. Your family may have done some horrible things to you, but they probably love generic holiday cards. And who knows, maybe you've done horrible things to them too. You’ve heard of nuance, right? Be a centrist not the Center-of-Pissed.

8. Find a significant other to marry or start a cult with. There are plenty of little fishies and sexy sharks in the sea. Find someone who is similar to you during this holiday season, and consider starting a family or cult with them. Now could be the time for you to meet your other and embark on a traditional family journey or strange esoteric mission. Perhaps even both, you dig? After all, who doesn’t love bizarre chanting?

9. Come up with bizarre chants. Married or single, it is time to get your chant on. Create innovative chants about Christmas that sound like religious speeches spliced with tribal drums, riots, orgies, dictator speeches, egg nog, and cold winter nights in Norway. If anyone asks you what drugs you’re on, just say you’re a fan of early Throbbing Gristle.

10. Start a podcast about other podcasts. Just go meta with it all and create a podcast about podcasts. What do you have to lose besides your time, soul, and sense of morality? Call it Pod Life. Keep it real, sugar pop. Every podcast you discuss on your meta-podcast should move you up socially and financially. Get ready to climb up that podcast ladder!

We are going to get through this together.

Things may be harsh with a world under lockdown, but at least you aren’t a low-level scientist in China who has been banned from the Internet and forced to start a career in America as a sex worker in Sparks, Nevada. You are not the only vitalist going through the changing season, so don’t be a snowflake about your aristocratic spirit as you ignore your biological family. All over the world, people like you are making the choice to have a Merry Christmas rather than a psychotic episode. Civilization is only as fallen as you think it is. Drink some alcohol-free alcohol, dance to some spy music, and listen to the Red Scare podcast so you can feel better about yourself.

Don’t forget to gift your friends and family with subscriptions to The Cultural Futurist, and subscribe yourself (have you not done this already?) as a premium member so you can attend my private salons and read my secret posts. This season is yours!

Finally, if you want to help make this post go viral in a world of pandemics, share it with everyone in your hiking Slack group or mildly offensive Discord channel.