Lesson 2: Assigning Blame

Okay, you've had a few days to work on the tips I suggested in my last post, it's time to move to the next level; Assigning blame.

The first qualification for anything you will do as a loser is that it must be unproductive. Assigning blame meets this qualification and serves a variety of other loserly duties as well. Finding people, places, and things to blame for your failures is easy and fun once you get the hang of it.

Blame can reach as far back as three generations in your family tree, or start with a bad tuna sandwich you ate last week. You can blame friends, family, world events, weather, and even the alignment of celestial bodies; anything you can use to increase your sense of powerlessness to change yourself or your life. Many people use childhood events or experiences to explain a lack of achievement, but if you really want to win at losing, you'll spread the blame around so that it sticks to everything like freshly cooked pasta in a cafeteria-wide food fight.

Now, there are some kill-joys out there (like Louis Zamperini) who have undergone horrible, terrifying and soul-destroying experiences, only to bounce back and achieve astonishing success. Their "inspirational" examples make it really hard on us to blame away our status as underachievers. Just take the opportunity to feel like more of a loser than ever, and then blame it on those bastards. There, see how easy that was? A practiced loser is able to process virtually any stimuli and turn it into another reason not to get off the couch today.

Let me give you a few personal examples of assigning blame. Today my hip hurts. It has hurt for about two days. This is probably due to my sedentary lifestyle and the fact that I tend to lounge on my left side quite a lot of the time. My hip hurts, therefore anything I was going to do today that may have been somewhat productive has been officially canceled. That's an example of a short-term blame assignment. For the bigger picture we have to zoom out a little bit.

"Hey, LoserGirl, why are you such a loser?" someone asks in a hypothetical tone of voice.
"Gosh, well, I really haven't thought about it. Ha ha! Just kidding. I do nothing but think about that all day and also pick my nose. Anyway, I guess it all started with my parents divorce and..."

You see where I'm going with this?

Choosing easy targets for your blame game will help the novice loser until he/she builds up enough experience to assemble highly complex and elaborate sets of variables in order to fabricate a truly impenetrable fortress of blame, shutting out any sense of personal responsibility or control. Blame should be like a thread that runs through everything in the tapestry of a loser's life. Give it a try this week and I think you'll notice results!

Best,
LoserGirl