12 simple steps to be miserable.

So, it's 2025. A fresh chance to overthink everything, to get lost in a sea of decisions, to get trapped in bad habits, to avoid taking risks, to put the minimum amount of effort in. Fuck being happy. That shit is too hard and too confusing. Not worth it. Not worth it. Instead, I'm gonna give you the playbook on how to be totally and utterly miserable this year in 12 Simple Steps. To do this, I want to tell the story of my experience painting a bedroom in an old house where I demonstrate with near-perfect execution how to do everything totally wrong. Step one, try closing your eyes tightly and hoping that the problem just resolves itself instead of facing it in any way. Step two, when inevitably that doesn't work you may proceed to the fetal position or lying flat in a demonstration of having given up before you've even started. Step three, imagine alternative life paths you could have taken to be loved and adored by millions. Maybe you should have tried to be a pro athlete. It doesn't look that hard. Eventually you realize that this cannot be how you spend the rest of your life, so you may proceed on to step four. Be absolutely terrified to make mistakes and look like an idiot. I'm a city kid with very few DIY skills, so I had an overriding feeling that if I tried anything, it would irreparably destroy the house. I decided to sort of attack two bedrooms at once. Here's what they looked like. Not bad, but I wasn't a fan of the floors. There was a weird gunk that made them look discolored and scuffed. My first idea was to actually sand the floors and stain them. I thought that would look really good, but I was shitting myself as I did my first test because, well, there's no turning back. You just have a part of the ground that's stained now. It looks impossibly bad if you stop there. Step five, be ready to quit at any point. Fearfully delay the inevitable by watching endless tutorials and not taking action. Eventually though I had to do something so I rented a floor sanding machine. I took the help of another guy at the store to get the machine into my car and I almost called it quits right there because I could not figure out how to get that thing up the stairs of my house. It's extremely heavy. I don't even know how I'm gonna take it out of the car by myself. So I actually think I've got to return it. Fuck. I was getting so excited to just dive into this and knock it out. Oh my god so many difficult decisions to be made. Fortunately, Pops was able to swing by and help me lug that motherfucker up the stairs. But even when everything is going well, you can always use your imagination to find something to fret over. Step six, expend as much energy as possible, worrying. At this point, I was getting a little excited. Things were looking up, a little more prep, and it was go time. I skillfully suited up, and once everything was ready to go, I nervously began to run the machine. Okay, no, Not ready yet. I needed an extension cord. So, the machine was not sanding properly. Okay, so, after just a few passes, um, I've quickly realized the floor is extremely uneven, which you don't ever see in a YouTube tutorial or video online, uh, but this is the real world. This isn't getting sanded, I'm getting portions only, and other portions aren't getting sanded. The floors were extremely uneven, and the store said it would need two weeks order the huge increase of sanding paper I would need to actually get all the gunk off. Step 7. Crumble internally. You must hold yourself to the impossible standard of somehow knowing what you were supposed to do while never having done any of this before. Step 8. Massively overthink everything. At this point I had to pivot and attack this with a new approach. Sanding the floors wasn't going to work so I had a new idea for the floors but that meant I needed to focus on the walls and ceiling first now. Everything you do should be seen as an opportunity to mess up and not as an opportunity to learn. But the negative comments online from people you don't know and will never know reverberate around your mind constantly. These time lapses might make me look like I'm actually good at this but I assure you I am not. This is what it actually looks like at normal speed. This barely creates dust by the way so I don't know why I was wearing a mask. It also at this moment when it dawned on me that I was in for so so much more work than I thought. Step 9 fully compare yourself with what other people are doing online. Definitely do not take into consideration another person's skill level, years of experience, temperament, the possibility that they're editing things out or getting help. Let your mind run wild turning even the smallest challenge in front of you into Mount Everest. You are a victim. Fully believe every doubt that pops up. We have three final steps to get to the most important steps but before we do I want to take a moment to thank the sponsor of this video whose support is funding all these painting materials as well as the creation of this video and that sponsor is BetterHelp. Therapy is excellent for escaping the trappings of your own mind. My therapist sent me a guided Qigong meditation that I've been using to reground myself in between panic sessions where I'm freaking out about how poorly this whole painting project is going. Whether you find it difficult to express yourself or indeed have a tendency to catastrophize things like I do. Speaking to a professional really is not a bad idea. I also really find it helpful to work with somebody who knows what they're doing to hold me accountable. You just have to fill out a questionnaire and you will be matched with the therapist in as little as a couple of days. The flexibility of doing this fully online is a huge plus for me. You can easily switch therapists at no extra cost if you're not clicking with who you're working with. And BetterHelp has diverse network of over 30 000 licensed professionals with a wide range of backgrounds if you're interested in checking it out you can click the link in the description down below or go to betterhelp.com nathaniel drew this link will give you 10 off your first month of therapy and clicking the link helps support this channel step 10 let impatience dictate how you feel focus only on visible results because all of the visible results come at the end you can use this as a a way to torture yourself while you make what looks like no progress at all across days and weeks of work. Painting a room requires so much more time than I had ever thought. Prep alone took me forever. Spackling, sanding, wiping down all the surfaces, mopping, caulking, taping, protecting the floors, and I'm not even talking about all the setbacks or time spent learning how to do this stuff. Notice I haven't even said painting yet and when it does come to painting you got to put primer and then at least two layers of paint. With each layer you got to cut first and then fill in. There's also various different techniques to doing this and people do not seem to agree about a single best way. Feel free to massacre me for my horrible technique in the comments. Step 11. Judge yourself harshly for your lack of experience doing this new thing even though the only way to gain experience is by doing it. You must be stupid for having even tried to do this project in the first place. What were you thinking? In the future, only try things you're certain will work out on the first try. Step 12. Try to do it all alone. If you want to be truly miserable, do this. It is at this point though that I decided to stop following this godforsaken list, as I realized I just didn't want to do this all alone. Such a stupid looking shot. so friends and family began participating in this project and it made a huge difference. I'm sad it's so hard picking colors. Well it's important because color does affect your mood. Although my 12-step plan on how to be miserable is perfect and guaranteed to succeed I'm really happy I messed up on this final step. It is definitely a sappy thing to say but I don't know where the fuck I would be without the people, the wonderful people in my life how does it feel if actually you're going through something difficult like really difficult like not like this silly painting project of mine and you're doubting yourself or you're beating up on yourself I thought I'd share this really wonderful quote that I think can put things into perspective and once the storm is over you won't remember how you made it through how you managed to survive you won't even be sure whether the storm is really over but one thing is certain when you come out of the storm. You won't be the same person who walked in. That's what this storm is all about." That is from Haruki Murakami from his book Kafka on the Shore. It has been really cathartic for me to laugh at myself throughout this whole process. Wait, so you do videos? Yeah. Yeah, dad. What's in YouTube? What do you think of it, dude? Family moments. So I guess now all that's left is to show you how it turned out. So here's how it was in the beginning, and here's how it looks now. I think you can tell that interior design is not my forte, but that's okay. I think it's getting there. It feels relatively cozy. We got an armoire in here. Getting this thing in here was insane. The color that I ended up picking for the walls is kind of like a light eucalyptus color. Haven't installed the light yet. You know, we have a lot of stuff to do. I want to sandblast the doors because I want them, I want expose the wood but it's it's it's a lot of projects one thing at a time i gotta say i'm pretty happy with how this all came out did i do a perfect job no but we're not going to look too closely at the details okay i got halfway through the second room and have decided to put a pause on that um so it's not quite completed but the first room is looking amazing and now at least i have a wonderful guest room to receive guests thank you nico ade bartholomew leo lucas bernardo mom and dad for your help painting these bedrooms i feel loved and supported by you and i guess in the end it does take a village oh that's actually perfect though

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Timestamps:

0:00 – Intro
0:36 – Step 1
0:46 – Step 2
0:55 – Step 3
1:14 – Step 4
1:54 – Step 5
2:43 – Step 6
3:54 – Step 7
4:07 – Step 8
5:12 – Step 9
5:49 – Sponsor
6:48 – Step 10
7:50 – Step 11
8:08 – Step 12
10:03 – Room Reveal