People talk about this stuff all the time, but it’s really hard to make your own way in the world today. You’ve got so many competing voices, all of them trying to tell you what to do, how to dress, do this, do that. Sometimes you feel like you’re not really making any decisions at all, like you’re kind of just floating through life, randomly bumping into this, barely staying on two feet as you collide into that.

You’ve just got to be yourself, that’s the best piece of advice I can give to you. Take a look at your clothes. Do you ever feel like the rest of the world is subtly dictating the terms of how you dress every day? Unless you invented your own pair of pants, I’d have to say that, yes, you’re just following the crowd. How can you be yourself if you’re just wearing what everybody else is wearing?

Take off your pants. OK, you’ve got to make your own pants. And you’ve got to make them out of something crazy, something unique. How about shirts? Take a bunch of shirts and sew them together until they’re pants. That’s it. You’ve done it. You’re being unique, you’re starting something new here. You’re being yourself.

There’s only one problem. You’re not being yourself, because I just told you to do it. So take off your shirt pants and put your old pants back on, because you look like an idiot, because you were just following orders again. You’ve got to think even bigger. And no, the pants thing is totally out of the question now, because whatever you wind up doing with your pants, I’ve already put the whole pants idea in your head. So just move on.

No, you’ve got to like, embrace your inner you. What does that even mean? Exactly. If I told you what it meant, we’d be right back to where we were with the whole pants thing. Is this starting to make sense? I hope not, because then you’re not being original. I’m being original right here, and so really anything you’re thinking right now, it’s all derivative.

I’m being derivative, because I’m starting to get to that point where I’m saying the same thing over and over again. But that’s me, I’m being myself here. If, for some reason you’re still reading this, which I doubt, because I’ve already said the same thing like three or four times already, five or six if you count this sentence, but if you’ve made it to this paragraph, you might think, OK, I’ll just stop now, I’ll stop being Rob and I’ll start being me.

Well, it’s not quite that simple. You’ve got to give it time. Your brain’s still going to be processing everything I’ve put in your head. Go ahead and try it, say to yourself, “I will not think about this anymore.” You’ve already failed. Because just by not trying to think about it, you’re already thinking about it, still. Thinking about what?

Again, exactly. You see where I’m going with this?