Ladies and Gentlemen: 

I’m not going to spend a lot of time telling you something you don’t already know.  Instead I’m going to remind you what most of you have forgotten to consider before heading out into a world where people criticize your every move.  “DO YOU.”  F*ck what anyone else thinks and f*ck what they say, because ultimately, where you are concerned, YOU have the last word [unless you’re arguing with a police officer; then you’d just better shut up and do what they say or run like the wind and hope like hell that the high speed chase doesn’t end up on the 6:00 news].  But let’s not plant any unnecessary thoughts in your head.  

• When your girlfriend or boyfriend starts acting shady; to hell with them!  DO YOU. 
• When your neighbor bangs on your walls to complain about the noises coming out of your bedroom at all odd hours of the night; to hell with them!  DO YOU.
• When your supervisor complains because you come to work late every morning with a bag of McDonald’s in hand; to hell with them!  DO YOU.
• When your friends tell you that your latest get rich quick scheme is going to be a flop; to hell with them!  DO YOU. 
• When a strange person on Facebook offers their stupid unwarranted opinion on a conversation between you and someone who’s actually on your friend list; to hell with them!  DO YOU.  

“Doing you” simply means living the life you deem fit for yourself.  It’s not about approval, consent, agreement, concurrence, endorsement or any other form of validation from anyone else.  No one else’s opinion should matter if you’re strong and secure in your own choices.  Everyone and everything else becomes secondary.  Until you learn that unspeakable truth for yourself, you’re going to spend the rest of your life being done by other people in a hole that’s only meant for exit, and without the use of any vaseline.  

• When your booty call gets mad because you’ve decided that you want to be alone this weekend; to hell with them!  DO YOU. 
• When your soap operas become more important than the people who ring your telephone to talk about nothing you care about; to hell with them!  DO YOU. 
• When your minister calls you out for being hung over in church but fails to point out that they chugged-a-lug right along with you; to hell with them – they have to answer to a higher power!  DO YOU.
• When panhandlers curse you out for not giving them any of your spare change to go buy a vodka miniature from the local liquor store; to hell with them!  DO YOU.
• When everyone looks at the wrinkles in your shirt and wonders if you got dressed in the dark; to hell with them!  DO YOU.     

People may offer you suggestions but they’re only offering you suggestions based on the choices they’d make for themselves.  You are not like anyone else.  In fact, no two people are exactly the same.  We are all unique.  We are unique in the way we look, dress, speak, walk, even smell.  Don’t even get me started on the stench of some people’s bullsh*t.    That’s a whole nother blog post. 

• When someone tries to pull you into their web of gossip; to hell with them!  DO YOU. 
• When someone tries to make their life appear to be more grand than yours; to hell with them!  DO YOU. 
• When someone counts the calories in the donuts you wolf down; to hell with them!  DO YOU.
• When humorless people are too boring to laugh at your farcical jokes and stories; to hell with them!  DO YOU.
• When someone makes a side-mouthed comment about your funky silent fart; to hell with them!  DO YOU.   Their sh*t stinks, too.  

Life is about the choices you make.  It’s about the dark alleys you decide to hang out in and the low-lives you choose to accompany.  You are beyond the years of living for anyone else – unless you work for P. Diddy.  Then this message doesn’t apply to you.  

Being your own person may not be the easiest thing in the world to do, thanks to the limitations that society has placed on us all, but there is comfort in knowing that 90% of any effort is getting started. 

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Quote of the week:   “The strongest principle of growth lies in human choice and there are two primary choices in life; (1) to accept conditions as they exist, or (2) accept the responsibility for changing them.”