How to be a Terrible Guest (Extended Stay Edition)

December 4, 2025November 27, 2025 ~ SA Otey

Show up unannounced / Invite Yourself

Everyone loves a guest who shows up with plans to stay for several days/weeks.

Eat whatever you want

I’m sure they won’t miss the small cake in the freezer. Look for an expensive bottle of wine your host has been saving for their first anniversary. Leave your slop trough of a plate on the counter, you are a guest, you shouldn’t have to do dishes on your vacation.

Go to bed Late

Watch whatever you want when your host goes to bed. Hopefully, they don’t have a passcode on their pay-per-view. Now would be a good time to make some popcorn.

Sleep in

As you hear the clanging of pans with your breakfast being prepared, yell from your quarters about how you are trying to get some shuteye. They must know that you’re exhausted from watching all those movies last night.

Snoop Around

If they leave you alone for any amount of time, it’s a good opportunity to get to know them better by finding what they are hiding.

Smoke Cigarettes / Vape

If you don’t get a chance to stink up the guest room be sure to leave your butts in the flower garden. Be sure to tell the families, kids, that smoking is bad for as a urea plume is bellowing from your face cavity.

Stay as long as you want

Usually, after three days people start to feel uncomfortable with a guest being in their home. This is not your problem, start complaining about some of your favorites you’ve been eating and how someone needs to go to the store.

Half full or half empty?

November 25, 2025November 22, 2025 ~ SA Otey

I’m neither a half-full or half-empty, I’m more of a “There’s never enough” kind of person. I guess that would make me a half-empty person? I guess it depends on the size of the container.

Enough with the Daylight Savings

November 14, 2025November 12, 2025 ~ SA Otey

I once read a letter to the editor of a newspaper in which the person was complaining about springing forward. It was causing too much sunlight thus destroying their garden and lawn. I agree with this person. I think it’s time to stop springing forward. Let’s keep falling back though. Each fall we should continue to set our clocks back. How cool would it be to have our days and nights mixed up for a few years like newborn babies? To be honest, let’s start a petition at the White House to stop springing forward and back and just leave the clock in the spring-forward position. Let’s let God handle the daylight.

Why you should live in a tiny house

November 4, 2025 ~ SA Otey

In the past, when you heard of people living in mobile homes, you’d think they had the freedom to move where and whenever they wanted. Not true, the person was stationary, even to the point of installing brick as as trailer skirt.

Today, people are living in real mobile homes and sheds on wheels. It’s the cool thing to do, not because lack of cash, but choosing a minimal lifestyle. I’m not sure what is driving the craze of living small. Is it because their parents paid for it? Is it because they didn’t want to go to college and want to live on a small salary? Or is it ego fueled and counter cultural? You know, like having a bunch of dogs instead of children, covering your body with tattoos and piercings while living in a shed and pooping in a bucket. Didn’t the uni-bomber do that? Kids theses days…

Why I Stopped Watching the News (And You Should Too)

October 6, 2025October 3, 2025 ~ SA Otey

When was the last time you watched the news and said, I’m glad I watched that?

I can’t remember, because the news industry knows human psychology: bad news sells, good news doesn’t.

The Negativity Machine

Here’s a question that changed my perspective entirely: Why does it seem that there’s never any good news?

The answer reveals everything wrong with modern media consumption. News outlets have built their entire business model around exploiting what psychologists call “negativity bias” – our brain’s evolutionary tendency to pay more attention to threats than positive information. It once helped us survive in dangerous environments. Now it’s being weaponized to capture our attention.

“If it bleeds, it leads” isn’t just a catchy newsroom phrase – it’s the fundamental algorithm that determines what information reaches your brain every single day. A school shooting will dominate headlines for weeks, while the millions of students who safely attended school that same day won’t merit a single mention.

The Hidden Cost of Staying “Informed”

I used to take pride in being well-informed. I checked news apps throughout the day, scrolled through headlines during coffee breaks, and fell asleep to the soft glow of breaking news alerts. I thought this made me a more engaged citizen.

Instead, it was slowly poisoning my worldview.

The Mental Health Tax Constant exposure to curated catastrophe creates a persistent low-level anxiety. Your brain, designed to respond to immediate threats, doesn’t distinguish between a news story about violence happening thousands of miles away and actual danger in your environment. The result? Chronic stress about situations you have zero control over.

The Time Thief: Calculate how much time you spend consuming news each day. For most people, it’s between 1 and 3 hours when you include social media news feeds, news apps, and background news consumption. That’s potentially 1,000+ hours per year focused on information that rarely improves your actual decision-making or life outcomes.

The Illusion of Understanding Breaking news culture creates the illusion of being informed while actually making you less knowledgeable. Context gets sacrificed for speed. Nuance disappears in favor of dramatic headlines. Stories get updated or corrected later, but first impressions stick. You end up with strong opinions about complex situations you actually understand very little about.

What You’re Really Missing

When I stopped my daily news consumption, something unexpected happened: I didn’t become less informed about things that mattered. Instead, I gained something more valuable – perspective.

The news industry feeds you the worst 0.01% of human experience and calls it “reality.” But actual reality looks very different:

Medical breakthroughs happen regularly
Crime rates in most places continue long-term declines
People help strangers every single day
Communities solve problems collaboratively
Technology continues improving lives in countless small ways
Most human interactions are neutral to positive
Progress on global challenges like poverty and disease continues steadily

None of this makes headlines because gradual improvement isn’t dramatic. But it’s statistically more representative of human experience than the crisis-of-the-day that dominates your news feed.

The Liberation of Stepping Away

This doesn’t mean becoming completely uninformed or ignoring serious issues. It means being intentional about information consumption instead of letting media companies hack your attention for profit.

What I do instead:

Read weekly news summaries instead of daily updates
Focus on local news where I might actually take action
Choose one trusted source rather than consuming from multiple feeds
Seek out solution-oriented journalism that covers how problems are being addressed
Pay attention to long-term trends rather than daily fluctuations

The unexpected benefits:

Significantly reduced anxiety about world events
More mental energy for things I can actually influence
Better focus and productivity throughout the day
More optimistic (and realistic) view of human nature
Deeper engagement with my immediate community

Your Attention Is Your Life

Every minute you spend consuming news is a minute you’re not spending on relationships, creativity, learning skills, or engaging with your immediate environment – the places where you actually have agency and influence.

The media industry has convinced you that staying constantly updated on global crises makes you a more informed citizen. In reality, it often makes you a more anxious, distracted, and pessimistic person without meaningfully improving your ability to contribute to solutions.

Your worldview is too important to let it be shaped by algorithms designed to capture attention rather than inform understanding.

The Challenge

Try this experiment: go one week without consuming news. Notice how you feel. Notice what you do with that reclaimed time and mental energy. Notice whether you’re actually less capable of making good decisions about things that matter in your life.

My prediction? You’ll discover that most news consumption is a habit masquerading as a necessity. And breaking that habit might be one of the most liberating things you do this year.

The world isn’t falling apart. You’re just consuming a distorted sample of reality designed to keep you scrolling.

It’s time to stop.

Reflecting on Life Before Social Media

August 29, 2025August 28, 2025 ~ SA Otey

What does it really mean to go back to the old days? What are the old days and how do you define them?

To me, the old days is life before all the social media and other technologies that are supposed to make our life simpler and easier, but really just complicate things and cause anxiety

Who knows what’s next, because before there was TikTok, there was Instagram, and before Instagram, there was Facebook, and before Facebook, there was MySpace. Before that, all we had were blogs. Then that deviated to Twitter. Twitter was supposed to be microblogging because people didn’t have the attention span to read an entire post. They just wanted to read a few sentences and look at a pretty picture.

Let’s go back to blogs, delete all of your other social media, it’s time.

1. Telegraph (1830s–1840s)

Invented by Samuel Morse.
Used Morse code to send messages over long distances via wires.
Revolutionized long-distance communication.

2. Telephone (1876)

Invented by Alexander Graham Bell.
Allowed real-time voice communication.
Quickly became a staple in homes and businesses.

3. Radio & Broadcast Media (1890s–1920s)

Wireless communication began with radio.
Became a mass communication tool with news, music, and entertainment.

4. Television (1930s–1950s)

Added visuals to broadcast media.
Transformed communication into a visual storytelling platform.

5. Email & Early Internet (1960s–1980s)

ARPANET led to the birth of email and early internet.
Email became a fast and efficient alternative to postal mail.

6. Mobile Phones & SMS (1980s–1990s)

Made communication portable.
Text messaging (SMS) introduced concise, fast communication.

7. Internet Boom & Instant Messaging (1990s–2000s)

Services like AOL, MSN Messenger, and ICQ enabled real-time chatting.
The web allowed people to share information instantly worldwide.

8. Social Media (2000s–Present)

Platforms like MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok.
Transformed communication into a constant, global, multimedia experience.
Emphasized user-generated content, connectivity, and community building.

Why We Avoid Eye Contact in Public (And Whether You Should Too)

July 6, 2025July 5, 2025 ~ SA Otey

Ever notice how people seem to look everywhere except at each other in public these days? You’re not imagining it—and there are some pretty understandable reasons behind this shift.

The New Social Norms

Smartphones have revolutionized how we navigate public spaces. They’ve become our social shield, giving us a socially acceptable way to appear busy and unavailable. Beyond the technology, our culture has shifted toward more individualistic behavior in public. Where previous generations might have exchanged nods with strangers, many people today prefer moving through public spaces without social obligations.

In crowded urban areas especially, avoiding eye contact serves as a psychological boundary that helps maintain personal space and privacy. For many, it also reduces social anxiety and the pressure to respond appropriately to stranger danger.

So Should You Follow Suit?

The answer depends on your comfort level and the situation. Brief, natural eye contact followed by a slight nod or smile can still be a positive interaction—it acknowledges others’ humanity without being intrusive. Many people actually appreciate this small gesture, particularly in smaller communities or less crowded settings. Deep soul stares not so much.

The key is reading the room. If someone is clearly focused on their phone, wearing headphones, or actively avoiding eye contact, respect their signals. Match the social energy around you while staying true to your own comfort level.

You don’t need to force interactions, but you also don’t need to completely shut down the possibility of brief, respectful human connection if it feels natural to you.

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Should you go to high school reunions?

June 30, 2025 ~ SA Otey

If you have social media then you can get a preview of your high school reunion by scrolling through your feed. Bragging, boasting, deception, and lies. Someone will want to hook you into a multi-level marketing program or sell you some life insurance. You can see how fat/thin or old/young someone looks via the instagrams and facebooks.

If you have a friend you still talk to from your high school, be thankful. That’s all you need. You don’t need to go digging up the memories and run into someone who wanted to fight you 30 years ago. If you are part of the Hillbilly Ethnicity you know this to be true. If you must go, then wait until year 40 or 50 and let the crowd thin a little.

Why You Shouldn’t Be Yourself in Friendships

February 10, 2025 ~ SA Otey

Making friends is an important aspect of life. Having a social support system can bring joy, companionship, and a sense of belonging. However, having too many friends can be annoying. They suck the life out of you by asking for favors. They are never there for you in return. So choose wisely.

Don’t be yourself: Be fake and phony. People say they appreciate honesty. However, when they ask you a question and don’t like your answer, their ego can’t take it. Then they will tell others that you are mean and hateful.

Don’t be open to new experiences others are trying to lure you into. This includes any multi-level marketing scheme such as cleaning products, essential oils, or something that will fix all your problems. These people will be your friends as long as you keep purchasing from them. Once they bleed you dry of money, they will discard you. It will be like throwing away an old television set with a broken CRT and no remote control.

Be “sort of” approachable: Don’t smile, but smirk, and don’t make eye contact. You don’t want people trying to create small talk.

Don’t post anything on Social media. This ties back to being fake and phony. If you must engage online, only show your highlight reel.

Volunteer: Volunteering is a great way to give back to your community. It can also help you meet new people. Find a cause you’re passionate about and look for volunteer opportunities in your area.

People love talking about themselves. Being a good listener is a great way to make friends. So try to interrupt them often about how whatever they’ve done, you’ve done it before and better.

In conclusion, making friends requires effort and a bit of courage. Do not be cowardly. Do not do the bare minimum to maintain friendships. If you put in the effort, you’d be surprised how many people will eventually stay with you.