Okay so you're sitting there, messing on your phone, and you get a text.

And so it begins.

Thought after thought enters your mind on how you could answer this text. Not to mention what emojis to include throughout.

There's a list of abbreviations that may be helpful to you also, though you'll probably first have to look up the three new ones that you've just been sent via your friend.
Keeping in mind that your text has to be the perfect level of complex and simple. It has to be entertaining, yet informative.

You decide to go with "Haha. Okay. *smiley face emoji*" -- wait, scratch that, *winky face emoji* -- phew, close one.

Are we kidding?! Is this what we've come to? Apparently.

But why do we do this?

When you send a text and then receive one back, you get excited. Little receivers in your brain "ding" and send a signal that releases dopamine-- your body's version of happy juice, very literally. The more texts you get back and the more that are positive the more dopamine you have flowing through your system.

In other words, the same thing that's released when you drink alcohol or gamble or get high, is what you're dealing with now. And it's addicting.

We already can't put our phones down, now we have to struggle with the added time of figuring out exactly what will be the most hilarious not to mention PC (politically correct, no worries, I didn't know either-- got your back), and then elicit the most desirable response.

It's all very stressful.

What I know is that dealing with this world is hard, and harder still when you're a people pleaser like me and you want the world, well you'd settle for your friends, to love you and to love what you're saying and to respond positively.

But you need to knock it off.

First of all anyone you're texting probably does already love you in their own way and they don't need you doubting yourself for 20 minutes trying to figure out a response.
And second if they don't love you, why are you texting them? Cliché sentiment?

Maybe, but it works, and it's true.

You're already weird. You need to just accept that and move on with your life.
Go spend all that extra time that you were wasting on reading or painting or woodworking. Choose to #optoutside.

But is it really that much time you're freeing up? Probably.

We as a population are really big on the whole caring what people think while telling others not to care what people think. We're very circulative and ironic.

Good for us.

So we can continue to think about exactly what they want to hear or we can ignore them altogether and go fly a kite.