99 Problems. But This Ain’t One of Them.
When life blindsides you on a Tuesday, all you can do is sip your coffee, laugh at the chaos, and keep showing up.
Let me tell you something about problems.
We collect them. Like handbags. Like trauma responses. Like screenshots we swear we’re never going to look at again but absolutely will at 2am on a Tuesday.
We are deeply, spiritually, almost devotionally attached to our problems.
And I get it. Problems give us something to do. Something to talk about at brunch. Something to explain why the thing we said we were going to do in January still hasn’t happened. Problems are useful that way. Very convenient.
But here’s what I’ve been sitting with lately.
Some of what we’re calling problems? Aren’t. They’re just life. Regular, unspectacular, slightly annoying life — and we’ve been treating it like a crisis because nobody told us there was a difference.
Your landlord raised the rent. That’s a problem. Your friend didn’t text back fast enough. That’s not. Your credit needs work. Problem. Someone at work gets on your nerves. Not a problem. An inconvenience. There’s a distinction and it matters more than we think.
We’re walking around exhausted. Overwhelmed. Convinced that everything is urgent and nothing is fine. And some of that is real. A lot of it is real. But some of it — a solid, embarrassing percentage of it — is just stuff we picked up and decided to carry because we never stopped to ask if it was actually ours.
I’ve been making a list.
Not a gratitude list. I can’t with gratitude lists right now. This is different. This is an audit. A full, unflinching, slightly judgmental inventory of what actually qualifies as a problem in my life versus what I have simply been dramatizing because I am, at my core, a person with a lot of feelings and access to the internet.
The results were humbling. And funny. Mostly funny.
Which is why there’s a book coming.
99 Problems But [TITLE] Ain’t One drops May 25th — digital and paperback. And before you ask: yes it’s funny. Yes it will make you uncomfortable in a good way. Yes Aūna wrote it, which means it will be elegant and devastating and you will dog-ear at least six pages.
Stay rooted. Stay rude. And start auditing your problems.
Some of them don’t even belong to you.
— Aūna Millér
Creator of Rooted & Rude and The Daily F🍸ckcabulary