Have you ever had that moment when you suddenly realize you’re standing at your kitchen cabinet, eating Stacy’s Cinnamon Sugar Pita Chips straight out of the bag, and you don’t even know how you got there?
Oh, just me?
If you want the pita chips, please have the pita chips. But there are other times when you don’t want to leave the pita chips because A) you don’t know what to do with yourself instead or B) you don’t want to face your feelings/work/to-do list/children waiting on the other side of the pita chips.
In these moments, it’s a smart idea to have something else to do that doesn’t involve going back to responsibilities or work or contemplating your existence. That’s what this list is — 11 things that I think are silly or fun or moving.
Here’s a suggestion: don’t even click on all the links now! Instead, save this article somewhere easily accessible, and pull it out next time you feel yourself inexplicably drawn to the pita chips that you don’t really want.
Think of it like an emergency care package from me to you.
11 things that you can do instead of eating pita chips:
- Watch an SNL sketch on YouTube. If you like The Bachelorette, this one made me cry from laughter. Or you might like this or this or this one here.
- Play Ballz. To get it, search “ballz” in the app store + download.
Just trust me on this one.
- Make a Pinterest board of how you would decorate your hypothetical home if you had an enormous budget. Here’s mine.
- Do a Google image search for “teacup kittens” or watch this.
- Watch an Inside Amy Schumer sketch. Okay, I get that this is very similar to #1, but I love Amy Schumer’s work so, so much and it often has such hilarious social critiques of beauty, weight, and women’s roles in general. Check out this or this or this.
- Read the beginning of a romance novel. I think that romance novels are to the brain what sugar is to the body: delicious, and — if well written/baked — totally worth it. Amazon lets you read the beginning of a book for free, so you might try this or this.
- Pick out a hypothetical wardrobe of clothes that are mostly made of silk. Well, yours doesn’t have to be mostly silk. This site is fun for out-there daydreaming.
- Think about what names you would give to your hypothetical children or characters in a novel you’d like to write. You could start here.
- Read a fun blog. I like this and this and this. Oh, and this is kind of a guilty pleasure…
- Listen to pop songs that are guaranteed to improve your mood. This and this are basically foolproof for me, and this really takes me back. We also can’t forget THIS ONE. Dancing is optional but encouraged.
- Totally random, but this cracks me up every time. And this is so lovely.
What is the goal of this list? To get you away from the pita chips for a couple of minutes. Once we have even a couple of minutes of brain space, we can usually make a better decision about how to act in a way that best serves us.
Finally, there are going to be some times when you know that eating those cinnamon morsels isn’t really serving you, but you can’t quite put them down. It’s best not to beat yourself up too much about that. Kindness tends to be a much more effective long-term strategy. Plus, here’s what you can do the next day.
—
I know that we have our own list of things that we do in those weird moments when we feel like wewant to do something we don’t truly want to do and have to wait it out. Your ideas might be useful to someone else — will you share them and pay it forward? Leave them below!