We are an exhausting generation full of instagrams, facebook posts, and selfies (don’t you dare tell me that I’m too old for selfies…I would like to reserve the opportunity to “selfie” should I fancy…but I digress).  There is a brilliant article by Tim Urban from a while back entitled “Why Generation Yuppies are Unhappy.”  It basically describes how our delusional expectations are on a crash course with far less awesome reality. The net effect is that we are an entire generation of bummed out, woulda, coulda-ers with a serious case of FOMO.  Now, while this is somewhat drastic, a lot of the article rings true.

The people who truly succeed in this always plugged-in and turned-on generation, or at least so says I, are those who can look above the haze and proudly proclaim “holy cow, I’m a nerd.”  Do not fall into the rabbit hole – the bottom of which is littered with people with selfie sticks who have lost track of themselves. Self awareness is a characteristic lost on far too many these days.  Self awareness and killer sense of comedic timing is a gift. David Sedaris is really one of the first autobiographers to elevate this gift to a higher art form. Then came Allie Brosh.

Everything about the book is “flawed” from the lime green pages to the amplified stick figure drawings.  That is the point. Despite our best efforts, we are generally not the best versions of ourselves. We are weirdos running around in pink dresses and weird yellow dunce hats.  Usually we are the post-op dingbats, lit up like Christmas trees, running through fields with kites (Yes, readers that was me). Rarely are we the faces we project out to others (#wokeuplikethismyass).

I loved Brosch’s writing style.  It felt like your funniest friend telling you a story about nothing and it was the best damn thing you heard all day. That is the best way I can describe it and perhaps the only way I have to describe it.

The drawings, which are hysterical as is, brought the book to a different place.  Somehow, that wide eyed, no necked, curlycue armed self portrait captured a wider range of emotions than honestly any high fallootin’ piece of art I’ve seen in a long while.

So A+ from Kathryn D.  Take it with a grain of salt though – I did once run through a field cracked out on anesthesia dragging a kite on the ground behind me.

Excuse me while I put on my pink tunic and yellow cap…