1. You drink, right?

2. But no more than two times a week. Okay, three times if there is a holiday. Any more than that causes you to feel really guilty.

3. This guilty feeling after drinking? Part of it has to do with how unhealthy alcohol is for the body.

4. But part of the reason also has to do with your religious upbringing that demonized alcohol.

5. And while you don’t necessarily believe in this religion anymore, you still feel shame when you disobey it.

6. And the shame definitely carries over into other parts of your life besides drinking.

7. Let’s come out and say it, you feel shame about sex.

8. In fact, putting sex anywhere on the list, especially this high on the list, just increases that level of shame.

9. You wish sex could be hidden in the middle of the list or not spoken about at all, just like during your childhood.

10. So even though you’re in your mid-20s, you feel uncomfortable mentioning sex, as if it’s a dirty subject.

11. And this, in turn, makes it very uncomfortable to talk to attractive people of the opposite sex.

12. Uncomfortable to the point that flirting is not fun but more of an exercise in trying to hide/suppress your true emotions.

13. Therefore, you make sure all of your conversations with the opposite sex involve alcohol because it helps relieve these inhibitions.

14. Only you don’t have a high tolerance for alcohol, and any more than two drinks turns you into an all-knowing asshole.

15. So when you go out to meet new people, you drive away every attractive person and end up at the bar alone, staring at the TV and pretending you’re there to watch sports highlights.

16. You know what, let’s just give up talking about sex altogether and pretend it has nothing to do with the reason we’re looking for a potential mate. We’ll just both pretend we’re here by some sheer random incident and not the biological functions of evolution or God (not sure which, thanks to the above-mentioned religion) designed into us.

17. You know your way around the kitchen, and all your friends consider you a great chef!

18. Though the only reason you’re so familiar with cooking is because you never have anyone to go out to eat with, and you’re too embarrassed to be the person eating alone at a restaurant, so you’ve learned to cook to stay alive.

19. But just the thought of cooking for one sometimes makes you so depressed you can’t actually muster up the energy to cook, and you tell yourself you just won’t eat dinner that night.

20. But then you’re hungry at 10 p.m., and that’s too late to start cooking, so you end up getting fast food and feeling even more sorry for yourself.

21. And really, you never have people over to eat except for one friend, and this friend is the only person to ever remark on your cooking skills.

22. Even then, the friend didn’t use the word “great” but just thanked you for cooking and declined seconds, so it probably wasn’t a great meal or even a very good one, but just a mediocre one like everything else in your life.

23. And every time you do manage the energy to cook, you’re always angry because everything at the grocery store seems to be sized for families of 2, 3, 4, etc. Definitely more than one. So you end up paying extra for stuff you don’t need for a meal you don’t really want except to get it over with in the first place! So fuck them! They’re not getting any more of my fucking money!

24. Having a family is important, but at this point, my career is first.

25. Let’s be honest, Family vs. Career is a battle for last place. Both are so far off they might as well be a fantasy.

26. And you don’t even really want a family. Living alone and being able to indulge your every personal whim has spoiled you to the point you’re not even sure you could live with another person anymore. The upside to this is you can sleep in as much as you want, sometimes until the afternoon. Sometimes until after the sun has started to set. And this sleep: this deep, deep world where you can escape from the real world, is about the only thing you look forward to. And the thought of being awoken by kids or an alarm clock is terrifying. And your personal opinion on why you don’t have a career is because your subconscious is afraid of losing this sleep, even though your conscious tells you that you should really look for a career. Blaming your subconsciousness for your failures is really dumb, but it’s a lot better than blaming the fact you dropped out of college to follow a band. And how at the time, you thought that all would “work itself out” turned out to be a humongous fiction—a humongous fucking fiction. So there, real world, you win. Take my soul. You win!

27. You like dogs.