I don't know about you, but I'm bracing for the crippling solitude of yet another cuffing season spent uncoupled and utterly alone, save for my own self-indulgent introspective melancholy to keep me company until March's spring thaw, when I can take my emotional dependency to the great outdoors.
What is "cuffing season," you ask? It's that period starting somewhere between fall and winter when single men and women react to the drop in temperature and desperately seek another body to keep them warm, physically or even emotionally, especially if your girlfriend Rachel—okay, ex-girlfriend Rachel, fuck, I've got to get used to that—of two years recently left you.
Cuffing season is somewhat of a recent phenomenon, spontaneously originating somewhere around 2008 and disseminated as a novelty meme until it achieved fluency, mostly on—yeah, you guessed it—the Internet. And although people insist it's a valid concept, I have my doubts it's actually a thing, much like reverse racism. The default state for most people is bachelorhood and the best we can hope for are temporary interactions with other people. I'm optimistic that everyone will eventually find a lover to enjoy quality time with until your still beating heart is ripped out of your chest and you're left broken, used up and alone forever until the die you die. Meanwhile, check out this handy guide to spending cuffing season solo!
1. cuffinglead
2. social media
3. drawing
4. reading
Read And Write
Alone time is the perfect context to do some reading and writing. Not only are they fun, but they are forms of productivity that polish you into a more literate, empathetic person. Take time to read the classics, or check out the first 100 pages of Infinite Jest before giving up. At least you tried, man.
If it's writing you're into into, journaling can unpack the meandering thoughts in your head into more concrete observations and opinions of yourself and the world around you. If you can't think if what to write, just start with the simple rule: Write what you know. That's exactly why I excel at writing about jealousy, abandonment, victimization and restlessness. The ink in my pen drains out like poison as I describe my surroundings, for example, but not limited to: the indifferent silence of my apartment broken up the bleating of traffic outside, the intermittent chirp of a smoke alarm that needs a new battery, the echo of Rachel's voice in my head that's as lost to me as a child's death rattle at the bottom of a well.
5. exercise
6. tv show binge
Watch All The TV Shows And Movies Your Friends Are Always Talking About
It seems you can never really keep up with all the television series and movies that come out from month to month. During cuffing season, when you're alone and stewing in an existential quagmire, why not distract yourself with a binge Netflix session or illegal torrent of what's in theaters this weekend? Take this opportunity to finally stop your piece of shit friends' incredulous barks of, "You've never seen The Wire?! But you're white!" Or, watch a few Criterion Collection movies so you can leverage that experience into banging the next film student you meet.
I mostly stick to documentaries because every fucking feature film or television show is centered around a love story. Sure, you have basic story of elements of (wo)man versus nature, (wo)man, environment, technology, self, religion, etc., but the main character is only ever truly redeemed, validated and lent a sense of immortality through the process of finding romantic love. Fuck that. All of these tales of sparking an amorous relationship typically launch me backward into revisiting the magical amazement of Rachel and I's first few dates. These simulations of memory mock me and I always end up realizing I am nothing more but a man imprisoned in a net of tyrannies and beset on all sides by scenes, vignettes and expressions of sense memory that draw my thoughts back to her. Goddamn this cruel life. Right, so, yeah, turn on a doc. I recommend Blackfish. Whales are dope.
7. stoicism
