“In fact, having sex burns calories at about the same rate as walking at a pace of 2.5 mph. ‘Given that the average bout of sexual activity lasts about 6 minutes,’ the authors write, a man in his early to mid-30s might burn 21 calories. But wait, it gets worse: Considering that this man could burn 7 calories just watching TV, the true benefit of having sex is only 14 additional calories burned.”
 — Many common beliefs about dieting and exercise, such as the one about how sexual intercourse burns 300 calories, are not at all true. So go ahead and take the night off.

The wind advisory remains in effect until 6 p.m. and then it gets colder and colder so you know, prepare yourself. MEANWHILE enjoy some events. The English Beat! The Chamber Music Society! The School of Seven Bells, the fine folks of Granta, and Mr. Sam Sifton gabs it up with Mr. Eddie Huang.

Sports nerds shouldn’t be the only ones who get to say smart-sounding sports stuff during this weekend’s big game. So here once again to provide you with some Super Bowl small talk is Jim Behrle, Awl football picks haiku-ist. Just for you, he’s assembled these highly proprietary pieces of wisdom gained from a life lived in his mom’s basement, playing Madden all day. Enjoy!

PRE-GAME

• “It wouldn’t shock me to see deposed quarterback Alex Smith play a key role in the outcome of today’s game. Just like when Deep Blue moved its rook all the way down the board against Garry Kasparov in a seemingly random and pointless move, expect the Harbaughs to attempt to outcrazy one another just for the befuddlement factor. Brothers are all about psyching each other out. But like the Williams sisters, they will keep it close. If one of them blows it out, Family Christmases are canceled forever.”

• “Why would anyone want to win the coin flip? These days everyone defers. It gives your defense a chance to make a big stop and gain momentum and it gives you the opportunity to come up with a great first drive in the second half with all your adjustments in place. And especially with a longer halftime during the Super Bowl. Score the first drive of the second half and you’re cooking with gas.”

FIRST QUARTER

• “Everyone seems to think all of the pressure is on Flacco to do something spectacular for the Ravens. But if Bernard Pierce can run for 100 yards and a TD the Ravens will be tough to beat. He and Torrey Smith are all the offense the Ravens need. They take all the pressure off Ray Rice and Joe Flacco. One big strike downfield and lots of little dive plays to keep the clock running.”

• “I’d bet this game comes down to a controversial blow to the head. Ed Reed and Bernard Pollard are completely vicious. And there are no one-game-suspensions for hits to the head in the Super Bowl. What, you have to sit out Game1against the Browns next year? That’s just more time to polish your ill-gotten Super Bowl Ring.”

• “David Akers could cost the Niners a championship. His struggles are in his head. I wouldn’t normally recommend icing the quarterback with a timeout. But I would definitely give him the chance to have to think about a big kick in the second half.”

SECOND QUARTER

• “This pistol offense of the 49ers is so impressive. This was supposed to be the year of the Two Tight End set. The pistol makes the wildcat look like the flexbone.”

• “You have to expect a rookie quarterback to struggle in the Superbowl. It’s only natural. Give defensive coordinators two weeks and they’ll find a way to make your wife leave you and for your dog to bite your leg off.”

• “You’d think the younger brother would want to beat the older brother so badly, the hunger and the pent-up rage would propel his team to victory. But the older brother isn’t all that concerned with the little brother. He can approach it dispassionately. That’s his edge.”

HALFTIME

• “Is there anyone more talented at anything on the Earth than Beyoncé is at entertaining? I don’t think so. And I don’t even care if she is lip-syncing.”

THIRD QUARTER

• “Both of these defenses will tire and give up big plays down the stretch. The question will be, which defense can make the big stop when it’s necessary? I can’t help but feel that team would be the Ravens. What they did to Tom Brady only his wife Gisele should be legally allowed to do. They can beat Peyton Manning and Tom Brady but not Colin Kaepernick?”

• “I have to think that Jim Harbaugh’s fiery nature will be his undoing. He’ll either throw a red flag when he can’t and get a penalty. Or he’ll have an aneurysm on the sideline. His face is a red color only a broken blood vessel could love.”

• “Do you think God really communicates with Ray Lewis? Does God speak in a crazy-talk half-Scripture half-penitentiary language that only Ray Lewis can understand?”

FOURTH QUARTER

• “Tight end Dennis Pitta is going to be wide open during an important moment. He’s got to make the most of his chances. In the year of the Tight End he might be the last one standing.”

• “Frank Gore just quietly goes about his business and is on his way to another monster day. He is one of the most anonymous spectacular players in the NFL. “

• “If the NFL went back to wearing leather helmets you wouldn’t see these kind of dangerous leading-with-the-head hits. And if football players didn’t all wear helmets we’d recognize and sympathize with them more. If all these baseball players or basketball players were dying in their 40s or committing suicide, America wouldn’t stand for it.”

• “Do you think Ray Lewis can run for President? He was involved in that murder. But everyone forgave Hillary Clinton for Vince Foster. So maybe?”

Related: How Much More Do Things Cost Today: The Super Bowl Edition

Jim Behrle tweets at @behrle for your possible amusement.

[UPDATE: Two stars.] ★★ The morning drizzle was almost imperceptible; a hand placed on the kindergartener’s hood to steer him schoolward detected droplets on the fabric. Blue peeped through, and for a while the blue was general, overlaid with a glowing haze. Then gray took over, then traded back to blue, off and back again. The mildness was nothing excessive. Coats were still useful and in use. By evening, it was wet again. The night air over Times Square held the light, glowing off to the east through the steaming window of the cab.

In the week leading up to the Super Bowl, we can be certain of a number of things. Someone will suggest that the Monday after Super Bowl Sunday should be a national holiday. The food journalism industry will grind to a halt with party menu suggestions. A current pop song will be selected as the background music for the stirring video recap/build-up to open the broadcast (like say, Band of Horses’ “The Funeral”). The impact on the local strip clubs will be examined. A competition will be held in which people make a commercial for a product and the winning commercial will be broadcast.

It’s all strangely comforting, this time when America has the Super Bowl all up in it. As this column is dedicated to taking some element of life that we all take for granted and examining how its cost has changed over time (such as with TVs, or martinis), as adjusted for inflation (of course), we are accordingly ready this week for some football. Specifically, let’s look at the cost of running those television commercials, then the cost for the tickets to the actual event itself (these are rumored to actually exist!).

***

There are an array of Super Bowl trivia factoids that make the rounds each year: a whole lotta guacamole is consumed (eight million pounds being the stat that makes the round), it’s the biggest day for domestic violence in the U.S. ( apocryphal!), the half-time demands on American sewage systems is famous (and apocryphal!). Maybe factoids is the wrong word; more like old saws.

And the old saws are fun, apocryphal or not. They are an important contribution to the communally enjoyed small talk of the universe we live in. All that guacamole that may or may not be consumed? Well, it’s possible to take the potential amount of guacamole, figure out how many avocados will be consumed, and what could be done with all those avocados! Eight million pounds of guac is the figure often cited. So, if all that gauc was made from two avocados, then each of them would be as big as the Staten Island Ferry. (This can be repeated, and will be, for Cinco de Mayo.) See? Fun!

But let’s talk about TV, as the amount of money the network charges for a thirty-second spot is another favorite gambit to trot out this time of year. The Super Bowl commercial is now as much a cultural element to discuss as the game itself. There are the ads we all remember (Mean Joe Greene giving the kid his jersey in 1979; clip above), and the ads that launched companies into unimaginable success (Apple’s 1984 introduction of the MacIntosh). (Would you like an archive of Super Bowl commercials? Try this one.) There were even the commercial promotions that broke (possibly terrible) ground in how television advertisement would work, such as the Bud Bowl, in which animated beer bottles would simulate an entire football game, first broadcast during Super Bowl XXIII in 1989, or even promotions broadcast on networks not airing the Super Bowl but scheduled to take place during half time, like the promotion of “In Living Color” on Fox during Super Bowl XXVI in 1992, and Animal Planets’ Puppy Bowl, now in its ninth year, which no living human can resist. Beer, “In Living Color” and puppies all experienced spikes in popularity following these broadcasts.

The rights to broadcast the Super Bowl cost an awful lot of money, even considered as part of the general NFL rights packages the networks agree to, said to average upwards of a billion dollars a year. And selling the inventory of broadcast time is a way to make that money back. In 2011, the broadcast included forty-eight minutes of commercials, which is only twelve minutes less than the amount of time in a regulation game. The amount charged for commercial airtime is generally the most that any network will be able to charge that year.

So let’s look at how much the average thirty second Super Bowl spot cost, in dollars adjusted for inflation.

We’re starting with the first televised game of what would become the Super Bowl in 1967, as it was initially known as the NFL-AFL World Championship Game. A little history there: First there was the National Football League, started in 1920. In 1960, a group of owners that were refused NFL franchises started the American Football League. It wasn’t long until there was basically open warfare between the NFL and the AFL — competing for new players, poaching older talent, squeezing each other out of markets, etc. By 1966, they agreed to merge, with the leading team of each side meeting for the “world championship,” more popularly (starting in 1970) known as the Vince Lombardi Trophy. So not only was the first Super Bowl not called the Super Bowl (a much-debated brand name that wasn’t installed until the third one, in Miami), but it was also broadcast by two networks, CBS and NBC, as each had the rights to broadcast NFL and AFL games, respectively. Also note (sorry, Green Bay fans) that no copy exists of either telecast, as the videotape used at the time was comparatively expensive and frequently taped over for eventual broadcasts. So if you find one in your parents’ garage, congratulations, you are a kajillionaire.

The averages are as follows, with the conversion to current dollars (2012, to be precise — the BLS Inflation Calculator hasn’t yet been updated to 2013 values) in parentheses:

1967 — I, Los Angeles: $40,000 ($275,000)*
1968 — II, Miami: $55,000 ($363,000)
1969 — III, Miami: $55,000 ($344,000)
1970 — IV, New Orleans: $78,000 ($462,000)
1971 — V, Miami: $72,000 ($408,000)
1972 — VI, New Orleans: $86,000 ($472,000)
1973 — VII, Los Angeles: $104,000 ($538,000)
1974 — VIII, Houston: $107,000 ($498,000)
1975 — IX, New Orleans: $110,000 ($469,000)
1976 — X, Miami: $125,000 ($504,000)
1977 — Pasadena: $162,000 ($613,000)
1978 — XII, New Orleans: $185,000 ($651,000)
1979 — XIII, Miami: $222,000 ($702,000)
1980 — XIV Pasadena: $275,000 ($766,000)
1981 — XV, New Orleans: $324,000 ($818,000)
1982 — XVI, Pontiac: $345,000 ($820,000)
1983 — XVII, Pasadena: $400,000 ($922,000)
1984 — XVIII, Tampa: $450,000 ($994,000)
1985 — XIX, Palo Alto: $500,000 ($1,066,000)
1986 — XX, New Orleans: $550,000 ($1,152,000)
1987 — XXI, Pasadena: $575,000 ($1,162,000)
1988 — XXII, San Diego: $600,000 ($1,165,000)
1989 — XXIII, Miami: $675,000 ($1,250,000)
1990 — XXIV, New Orleans: $700,000 ($1,230,000)
1991 — XXV, Tampa: $800,000 ($1,394,000)
1992 — XXVI, Minneapolis: $800,000 ($1,309,000)
1993 — XXVII, Pasadena: $850,000 ($1,350,000)
1994 — XXVIII, Atlanta: $900,000 ($1,394,000)
1995 — XXIX, Miami: $1,000,000 ($1,507,000)
1996 — XXX, Tempe: $1,100,000 ($1,610,000)
1997 — XXXI, New Orleans: $1,200,000 ($1,717,000)
1998 — XXXII, San Diego: $1,300,000 ($1,831,000)
1999 — XXXIII, Miami: $1,600,000 ($2,204,000)
2000 — XXXIV, Atlanta: $2,100,000 ($2,800,000)
2001 — XXXV, Tampa: $2,050,000 ($2,658,000)
2002 — XXXVI, New Orleans: $1,900,000 ($2,425,000)
2003 — XXXVII, San Diego: $2,150,000 ($2,638,000)
2004 — XXXVIII, Houston: $2,300,000 ($2,795,000)
2005 — XXXIX, Jacksonville: $2,400,000 ($2,821,000)
2006 — XL, Detroit: $2,500,000 ($2,847,000)
2007 — XLI, Miami: $2,390,000 ($2,646,000)
2008 — XLII, Glendale: $2,700,000 ($2,879,000)
2009 — XLIII, Tampa: $3,200,000 ($3,424,000)
2010 — XLIV, Miami: $2,970,000 ($3,127,000)
2011 — XLV, Dallas: $3,100,000 ($3,164,000)
2012 — XLVI, Indianapolis: $3,500,000

We can give the values for the first couple years a little less importance and think of them as reflective of growing pains. But looking at the early mid-70s, we see the 30 second buy leveling off around $500,000 (in current dollars) and then start a slow ascent, increasing by $100,000 or so every year until the mid-90s, where we see a steeper climb start to kick in (with plateaus or small decreases in recession years. Has the value of the Super Bowl TV commercial increased over time? Damn straight, by a factor of roughly 700% (or nearly 1,300% if you go back to Super Bowl “I”)

***

Now most of us will be watching at home, but some people will be at the game. They will be the tiny faces you see, rapt, awaiting the reunion of Destiny’s Child.

So let’s pretend you are not just there for a single game, but instead are one of those types with the foresight and then the continuing commitment to have attended every single one of the Super Bowls, even the first NFL-AFL World Championship Game in 1967. In order to have done this, you will have had to have purchased a ticket, a succession of 46 of them.

About the tickets. Chances are, if you wake up next week and decide that you want to go to Super Bowl XLVIII in a year’s time, it will not be a slam dunk for you, unless you are very famous and very wealthy (or know somebody, duh). Tickets for the Super Bowl are allotted amongst the teams playing, the host team, the rest of the teams and the league. From the 1977 Collective Bargaining Agreement between the NFL and the Player’s Association onwards, the allotments were based on percentages and instead of actual amounts of tickets. Under the current allotment, the host team gets five percent of the tickets, the two teams playing get 17.5% each, and the rest of the teams split the remainder up to 75% in the aggregate. The rest, and by far the biggest share of anyone, goes to the NFL for distribution to sponsors, vendors and the like.

So how do you get your own personal ticket? Well, some of the tickets allotted to the teams are earmarked for a portion of season ticket holders, so hopefully you are from a town whose team is going to the Big Show. And from the league’s 25%, they put a block of 500 pairs of tickets up for nation-wide lottery. So these are the tickets we’ll be talking about; those tickets that are designated for the fans, yet astronomically difficult to obtain.

As far as the costs go, there is the issue of the tiering of ticket prices based on field position, and the secondary markets (once known as scalpers, now known as StubHub, where you can most certainly find tickets to the Super Bowl, at a significant mark-up over the face value), but we are going for straight nostalgia — after all, it’s the Sport of Kings, better than diamond rings. (Football!). The Houston Chronicle has a nice slideshow (well, nice for a slideshow) of actual Super Bowl tickets, going all the way back. We’ll use that as a starter for research. Where multiple ticket prices are given, we opt for the cheapest. Historical prices are as follows, and again, converted prices in parentheses:

1967 — I, Los Angeles: $6 ($41.24)
1968 — II, Miami: $12 ($79.17)
1969 — III, Miami: $12 ($75.07)
1970 — IV, New Orleans: $15 ($88.76)
1971 — V, Miami: $15 ($85.03)
1972 — VI, New Orleans: $15 ($82.39)
1973 — VII, Los Angeles: $15 ($77.57)
1974 — VIII, Houston: $15 ($69.86)
1975 — IX, New Orleans: $20 ($85.35)
1976 — X, Miami: $20 ($80.70)
1977 — XI, Pasadena: $20 ($75.77)
1978 — XII, New Orleans: $30 ($105.64)
1979 — XIII, Miami: $30 ($94.87)
1980 — XIV Pasadena: $30 ($83.59)
1981 — XV, New Orleans: $40 ($101.03)
1982 — XVI, Pontiac: $40 ($95.17)
1983 — XVII, Pasadena: $40 ($92.21)
1984 — XVIII, Tampa: $60 ($132.59)
1985 — XIX, Palo Alto: $60 ($128.03)
1986 — XX, New Orleans: $75 ($157.11)
1987 — XXI, Pasadena: $75 ($151.58)
1988 — XXII, San Diego: $100 ($194.08)
1989 — XXIII, Miami: $100 ($185.16)
1990 — XXIV, New Orleans: $125 ($219.58)
1991 — XXV, Tampa: $150 ($252.86)
1992 — XXVI, Minneapolis: $150 ($245.47)
1993 — XXVII, Pasadena: $175 ($278.06)
1994 — XXVIII, Atlanta: $175 ($271.11)
1995 — XXIX, Miami: $200 ($301.30)
1996 — XXX, Tempe: $200 ($292.66)
1997 — XXXI, New Orleans: $275 ($393.39)
1998 — XXXII, San Diego: $275 ($387.35)
1999 — XXXIII, Miami: $325 ($447.89)
2000 — XXXIV, Atlanta: $325 ($433.32)
2001 — XXXV, Tampa: $325 ($421.33)
2002 — XXXVI, New Orleans: $400 ($510.49)
2003 — XXXVII, San Diego: $400 ($499.12)
2004 — XXXVIII, Houston: $500 ($607.71)
2005 — XXXIX, Jacksonville: $500 ($587.80)
2006 — XL, Detroit: $600 ($683.32)
2007 — XLI, Miami: $600 ($644.39)
2008 — XLII, Glendale: $700 ($746.46)
2009 — XLIII, Tampa: $500 ($535.09)
2010 — XLIV, Miami: $500 ($526.46)
2011 — XLV, Dallas: $600 ($612.42)
2012 — XLVI, Indianapolis: $600

Again, we’re looking at a distinct incline in the real price over time, a procession not dissimilar to that of the Super Bowl commercials. Ignoring the first game (again, as a debut/outlier), the ticket starts out at roughly a hundred bucks (in current dollars) a pop, for the next twenty years, the price slowly double. After that, it’s a sharper but more volatile climb, hitting an all time high in 2008 and finally settling in to the current price point of $600. That is not cheap — another 700% jump, or 1,400% if you do go back to 1967.

From the data, it’s pretty clear that the increasing popularity of football, as it slowly equaled and then surpassed the popularity of that most American of American games, baseball, is reflected in the inflation of associated costs. In the case of the television spots, you can throw in two other factors, first the growth in size and sophistication of the advertising industry over the past forty years, and second, and probably more importantly, the splintering of the television industry. At the time of the first game in 1967, there were three (or two and a half, some would say) national television networks on which to advertise. Additionally, there were no home-use devices that could record television, let alone skip the commercials. As the television industry developed into thousands of channels, and a decreasing audience willing to watch it in real time, the value of advertising on the Super Bowl increased, in terms of the audience it would draw, and in terms of the actual amount of that audience that would sit willingly through the commercials. Three and a half million dollars seems like a lot, but the business sections of the newspapers aren’t exactly filled with complaints about exorbitance.

And in terms of the ticket prices? In this case, we are talking about a commodity of nearly unimaginable scarcity. A hundred thousand tickets may seem like a lot, but it’s not even a measurable percentage of the NFL’s viewership, a two-thirds of Americans. The NFL could charge whatever they wanted for tickets to the Super Bowl and buyers would emerge. Maybe that bottom-tier price, even though it’s risen to a ridiculous $600, is some arbitrary level set to give the appearance of not being unseemly, of doing Joe Sixpack a solid, giving him a chance to see the game with the bigwigs.

Obviously, the NFL is in some pretty solid shape, regardless of the clouds looming on the horizon. On Sunday, the vast majority of us will neither be in attendance nor have a commercial airing, which will in no way stop us from watching.

Previously in series: How Much More Does A Steak Dinner Cost Today?

Brent Cox is all over the Internet.

“NASA is building an incredible lunar digging robot that could work all day, every day for years. This robot will be as different from the Curiosity rover as night and day, according to a news release from the space agency. While Curiosity has been packed with plenty of delicate scientific instruments for analyzing soil on the red planet, NASA’s latest creation will be both sturdy and reliable and contain fewer complex parts.”
 — All of modern life is owed to NASA and the moon missions, if you believe movies such as Men In Black, so it’s only a matter of time until the new “incredible lunar digging robot that could work all day, every day for years” becomes the default laborer here on Earth. People in the “knowledge economy” are all expected to be replaced by an RSS script and a retweet button.

Photo by NASA.

Okay. I should breathe. I’m trying to remain calm. Because I already got all “THIS IS GREATEST THING IN THE HISTORY OF THE INTERNET!!!” today over that panoramic picture from the top of the Burj Khalifa building in Dubai. But it’s hard, because video director Phil Morrison has made what is the NEW GREATEST THING IN THE HISTORY OF THE INTERNET!!! (You had a nice run there, Burj Khalifa. Though short.) It is the new Yo La Tengo video, for a song from their new album, Fade, and it is about playing an acoustic guitar in the woods and cooking a meal with friends. Recipes for Spanish tortilla and spicy tortilla soup are included and Superchunk’s Mac McCaughan plays Ira Kaplan and it is all just so understatedly beautiful that I can barely stand it. Oh, and Ira talked to Bon Appetit magazine about making it.

Appearing here Wednesdays, Turning The Screw provides existential crisis counseling for the faint of heart. “Eat two custard-filled doughnuts and call me in the morning.”

Dear Polly,

So, this is going to sound so dramatic and stupid and of-course-you-already-know-the-answer-to-this-why-are-you-even-asking? But I’m confused and I want to talk about this with someone. I moved to this cold, Midwestern state from the South (which I loved, but didn’t want to stay in for career reasons) two and a half years ago for law school. I left partially to get away from a bad relationship. A couple months in, I met someone else in law school. Things moved very quickly. I’d had bad luck dating here before him — the one guy I tried anything with had a premature ejaculation problem (more on that later). Long story short, things between me and him are AMAZING in bed. Fireworks. Two weeks later, he’s asking me to be his girlfriend. Having finally moved on from my toxic ex, I said “yes!”

Slowly, warning signs start emerging. He gets upset about me going to a football game with my new friend (remember, I’m new in this town and trying to make friends, and so every time a new friend asks me to do something, it’s a big deal to me). He yells at me one time so much that I break up with him (and then he begs me to get back together, promising he’ll be better). I made him go to therapy after the yelling incident. The therapist (preliminarily) diagnoses him with bipolar disorder. He tells me he’ll get treated, etc., we get back together. Of course, he stops going to see his therapist. After a few good months together, I have something tough happen in my personal life which throws me for a loop mentally. He continues to be weirdly possessive about time I spend with friends. I never even thought about cheating on him, btw, but it wasn’t really other guys he was jealous of, just me spending time with people other than him in general. In the middle of all this (in March, after we’d been together a little over a year), he proposes — with my grandmother’s engagement ring, which he got from my parents. Did I mention the sex was amazing and despite all his problems I really love him? I say yes.

Flash forward to July. He breaks up with me (in what I think was a bipolar episode — he also called me a cunt and called the cops on me for no reason — need I say more?). I fall apart and move in with my aunt and uncle, who live in town. I put my life back together. Unfortunately, we have a class together this semester, so I have to see him twice a week. I’m friendly to him because that’s just how I am — I can’t hold a grudge, no matter what the person has done to me. I start dating other people and seeing my friends more and getting back out there. Montage, activate! All my dating attempts just crashed and burned. The first one was a premature ejaculator who tricked me into meeting his parents on the third date. Then I had a one-night stand who was super-awesome in bed, but you know, one-night stand and all, so I never called. Then my best girlfriend here (who has her own boyfriend drama and ex-drama) made out with me at a party after asking me to go pee with her (I thought girl-code “do you want to pee?” really meant “do you want to pee?”) and told me she had “never felt this way about a woman before.” I’m horrible, but I hooked up with her a few days later just to see if I could be into women. (She’s gorgeous, funny and smart. Maybe?) I’m not. We’re still friends though! Then, I fell into bed with a friend of a friend on accident because he’s super cute and was laying in my lap. After we had sex, and I didn’t cum, I asked him if he would go down on me and he told me he “doesn’t go down” on women. What?! Never sleeping with him again. Then, this guy at a coffee shop hit on me and I thought “Here’s my romantic comedy moment! This is it!” So we exchanged numbers, he’s super cute and a writer and smart and funny. We sleep together and he’s not good in bed and super sweaty! I’m starting to think, “What is up with these Midwesterners? Are they all crazy and/or bad in bed?” Anyways, around this time, my ex is really trying to jump my bones, and having not had a proper fuck in months (since the one-night stand), I think sure, why not, I know he’ll be good in bed at least.

So that brings me to where I am today. I’ve been in therapy for months to deal with the fallout of this broken engagement. I had my grandmother’s engagement ring made into a necklace to symbolize a new beginning. All my friends and family would disapprove of us getting back together, as would his (so he tells me). But the sex is sooooo gooood. So we’ve been basically secretly back together for a couple weeks now. We say “I love you,” spend the night together all the time, etc. I know, I know. But the sex is soooo gooood. I know the right answer here is, be strong! You’ll find someone else eventually! But obviously it’s not that easy, since I’m writing to you. Anyways, tonight, after he convinced me to go buy weed from my downstairs neighbors, who neither of us has ever met before, but we know they must sell weed because we can smell it (did I mention one of the problems in our relationship was his pot addiction?), he suddenly got “sick” and had to leave — with the joint, which he said would settle his stomach. I tried to convince him to stay, but he was adamant. It made me feel like shit and like, “What am I doing?”

Which leads me to writing to you. I know I’m too emotionally attached to be playing this Russian roulette. He also does nice boyfriend-y things like shovel out my car when it gets snowed in. But my therapist, friends and family would all say “Are you crazy? Get rid of this asshole!” But I also can’t talk to them about how I need to get laid and everyone else here sucks in bed. So how do I move on from this toxic relationship and either find someone else to fuck or get to the point where I’m okay with not getting laid for a while? I’m also super busy in law school and with work and don’t really have time for dating, and it was nice dating him in that sense because we both got each other’s schedules. Also, part of me (I know this is irrational, but bear with me) tells me, “You’re 26! You’re too old to be starting all over again. Just stick with this guy who is smart and hot and good in bed and wants to marry you. Who knows if anyone else will?” Saying that out loud is hard, but there. I said it.

So what is wrong with me? Why do my relationships end up like this — huge toxic smoldering craters? And what should I do now? For what it’s worth, I really do think he loves me. Also, I’ve tried waiting longer to sleep with someone, but then the same problem still occurs, just later on, when I have more invested in them emotionally and it sucks more to break it off. People have mentioned to me the concept of “Teaching them to be good in bed,” but blegh — I’m just not that patient and part of me is like “If it clicks, it clicks right away.” The physical part of a relationship is very important to me, I don’t want to have to compromise on that just to be with someone who’s emotionally stable! I don’t know. Tell me what to do.

Needs Some Good Lovin’

Dear NSGL,

Here’s what’s wrong with you: You’re careless and you don’t give a shit about other people. Your bluster barely conceals your extreme insecurity. Because you’re sure that there’s something ugly about you (deep down inside, something that means no man will ever truly love you), you pretend that you’re everything you wish you were — carefree, tough, superior to the mere mortals around you. You’re busy and impatient and all you really have time for right now is the Really Good Sex. If you have to extract that resource from a confused bipolar guy with anger issues who once ground your sense of self into the dirt, so be it.

Don’t worry, though. Many, many women I know went through the same kind of blustery, self-hating nightmare phase at some point. It’s a wild, lonely rollercoaster ride of grandiose, needy, judge-y, sludgy narcissism. Most of us are humbled at some point and we slowly recognize that all of the chaos and bullshit around us is caused, in part, by our own self-centered, dodgy behavior.

You’re using the quest for good sex as an excuse to act like an idiot. The truth is, you’re only interested in men who aren’t interested in you or who have major problems. You are physically repelled by men who have the ability to focus on you. This makes some of them nervous, and they’re bad in bed as a result. The second you start accepting yourself, warts and all, you’ll be able to let other people in more completely, listen to them, accept them for who they are, and fall in love in a meaningful way — and the sex will be better than anything you’ve experienced so far. (Even without the love, most of those fumbling guys are going to be far more dexterous and self-assured in a few years. Mark my words.)

But you’re not there yet. Not only do not need to be having good sex in order to survive, YOU need to NOT be having sex at all in order to survive right now. Call your therapist and set up an extra appointment and tell him/her everything, immediately. Talk about the sex. If you can’t do that, consider finding a new therapist with whom you feel comfortable discussing sex. And once you’re done talking about how all-consuming and important good sex is to you, then I want you to try very hard to talk about the other stuff: Who you are, what you want, and how you feel about yourself in that moment after you fucked your crazy ex and now he’s absconding with the joint you secured for him.

Age 26 is a great time to start all over again, actually. You’re well ahead of the curve here. You don’t really have a choice either way. Your ex has serious problems. Right now he’s a possessive, bipolar stoner. In a few years, without treatment, he could easily become someone who’s abusive, who can’t hold down a real job, who cheats on his wife, who can’t stand to spend time with his kids, who crushes everything beautiful and good he sees. This guy is bad news, and the stakes will only get higher as you get older. You’re not helping him by staying with him, either — you yourself are fucked up, and you’re making it more likely that he’ll continue to spiral downward.

Take a break from drinking, smoking pot, and sleeping around — or the sake of clarity, for the sake of circumnavigating those smoldering craters from this point forward. You’ll be able to loosen up soon enough. For now, though, you need to unearth the stuff about yourself that scares you, the stuff you hate, the stuff that makes you suspect that you’re doomed to chase assholes for the rest of your life if you want to be loved. Once you sift through these dark fears and insecurities — and it’ll take a while, so be patient — you’ll emerge with a better sense of who you really are, and you won’t mind if other people see that person clearly.

Because it’s not good enough to be loved for being a smart, sexy, spontaneous cipher. It’s not good enough to seduce someone into being fixated on this pretty illusion you’ve constructed. Read this if you want to know what that superiority complex of yours will look like in two decades. Wurtzel has been humbled (and her honesty about that is rare and fascinating), but she still can’t let go of the narcissistic compulsions that landed her there in the first place. (See also: Who can?)

Like her, if you want to maintain romantic illusions about what a rare and colorful bird you are, against a backdrop of dull miscreants, you can do that indefinitely. But you won’t be happy in love until you’re loved for who you really are. And that’s not possible until you figure out who the fuck that is, and you love that person. I know that sounds like old news, and it sounds difficult, and it makes you feel vulnerable and sad. Feeling humbled is good, it will take you down the right path. Let your vulnerability lead you. Every bit of terrible you dare to feel right now will pay off in happiness down the road.

Polly

Dear Polly,

I am a person that wants to write for a living, or at least I think I am. Unfortunately, I don’t think I’m cut out for it and may inevitably fall to my doom if I try at it, constantly asking myself “What the hell was I thinking?” and working in retail. I have become extremely pessimistic about ever becoming successful at the only thing I love to do. A few weeks ago I submitted an article to a website similar to The Awl, but I’m pretty sure they rejected it (I’d like to think it didn’t send since a little caution sign popped up next to it in my outbox, but who am I kidding?). This killed any confidence I may have had and now I’m frantically searching for the right answers and random signs from God.

I’m not finished with college yet, so I haven’t committed to a Creative Writing major or anything like that. I am, however, transferring to a 4-year university next semester and would like to know the truth about the writing business before I fling myself into its potential death trap. I have big dreams growing inside even bigger dreams, and at this point I have no clue what to do with them. Should I toss them or follow the slightly delusional path toward becoming what I’ve always wanted to be? And could you be painfully honest?

Sincerely,

Scared Shitless

Dear Scared Shitless,

Being a writer is as torturous as you make it. Most writers prefer to make their lives extra torturous with torture cherries on top. We like to suffer (a lot) and when we’re not suffering, we like to talk about how much we were just suffering a little while ago. We like to get worked up over bad reviews, editorial rejections, half-finished outlines, half-baked ideas. You name it, we can work our fucked-up little heads into a real stew over it. Not only that, but if we’re reasonably good at what we do, we also tend to edit and rewrite and toss out and re-edit our shit over and over again. This means that everything we produce spends a lot of time in this Not Quite Good Enough state, during which we writers feel that we, too, are Not Quite Good Enough. If there’s one definitive feeling to being a writer, that’s the one. (Read this if you want to know what all of this ego-driven compulsion will look like in two decades.)

It’s like we’re in training to be depressed most of the time, if you think about it. Pushing ourselves to improve our work, choosing increasingly difficult writing tasks, reading the best writers and comparing ourselves unfavorably to them. Why not start each day by stretching out your insecurity, then move on to self-hating calisthenics, followed by a marathon run around the same frustrating, repetitive running track in your head, until you’re genuinely anxious and pissed off and sad? Ironically, once we’ve achieved our target state of total self-pity and outright panic, that’s when we start to look for a way out. That’s when we frantically search for the right answers and random signs from God.

Writers are masochists. Don’t be fooled by those pleasing interviews on Poets & Writers, in which some serene-sounding scribe lays out the soothing yet productive patterns of his or her existence. (“I awake at five a.m. and write for four hours straight, then take a ten-mile walk among the blue jays and cardinals of my country estate…”) Patience, faith, optimism — these things are tough to generate, even when you feel sure that you’re meant to write for a living. Sure, we’re lucky that we can write, that we’re not begging for a cup of dry rice at the side of the road. That doesn’t stop us from sometimes wishing that we could do anything in the world but stare at the blank page, wondering what the fuck our empty heads have to offer.

So I could say, “Writing is great if you can manage it correctly, if you can be a good boss to yourself and keep yourself on a schedule and edit yourself carefully and question your own assumptions about your work and write for long hours every day, without fail.” But it’s extremely difficult to pull that off consistently. I have stretches of success with it, punctuated by torturous self-pitying downward spirals.

You’re not even out of school yet, and you’re already eating yourself alive over this stuff. Or, as Wallace Stegner once put it in a letter to a young writer like you, “You would like to be told that you are good and that all this difficulty and struggle and frustration will give way gradually or suddenly, preferably suddenly, to security, fame, confidence, the conviction of having worked well and faithfully to a good end and become someone important to the world.” With admirable humility, Stegner adds, “It is the sort of thing I felt myself at your age, and still feel, and will never get over feeling.”

So, get used to this feeling, because as a writer, it will never leave you. If you’re lucky you’ll have a brief respite here and there, but generally, being a writer involves more than a little panic and self-doubt over the years. (Or, it involves writing stuff you don’t really want to write for a salary.) But right now, you’re blissfully immune to such pressures. You can enjoy the luxury of being in school, of trying new things and sometimes failing, of experimenting and making a few mistakes. Rejection isn’t personal, so try not to stew over it. It means nothing, and you should never, ever slow your pace just because you suspect that some editor somewhere doesn’t absolutely embrace and adore every single word you commit to the page. No matter how good a writer you are, you aren’t so good that you won’t have to work very, very hard. Not only that, but the second you’re great at one kind of writing, chances are you’ll want to try something even harder (because you crave more torture cherries, I guess).

There is no sign from God that will change your fate. If you’re looking for one, that tends to mean you’re not writing enough, and you simply need to get back to work. As K.C. Constantine wrote in another letter to an aspiring writer, “[W]riting is the gig.” You either want to spend your time writing or you don’t. If you love to write, then keep writing. Write a lot. Don’t question it every few seconds. Don’t scan the publishing landscape for notions of how you should package your unique voice (and thereby make it less unique before you’ve even finished the writing). Just do the work. You’re not some magical Rumpelstiltskin who can spin gold out of words. You’re just a person who likes to write. You can either continue to write (a lot) and improve (while taking the many, many rejections that await you in stride), or you can choose a slightly less torturous, more practical path. Most writers have day jobs — and some have day jobs they absolutely love, day jobs that prevent them from freaking out every few seconds about the gas bill.

Did you follow up with an editor at that website, by the way? You should do that if it’s been a week and you haven’t heard anything. Did you pay close attention to the kinds of pieces this website publishes? Did you match the tone and the length of the pieces they publish? Does your first sentence make an editor want to read more, or does it start out with something that presupposes an interest in the narrator, like “I’ve always thought that cows were the world’s most awkward animals.” Or “What’s the deal with all of these shows about cops?” As a writer starting out, you have to edit your work until it’s better than most of the other stuff published by that website or magazine. And if you’re not doing all of the above, then you’re just being naïve and sloppy. That’s ok. We’ve all been there. But don’t expect magic until you’ve done the work.

Every writer, young and old, humble and exalted, needs to be reminded of that almost every day: Just write. Forget magic and answers and signs from God. Just keep writing. Enjoy the writing itself. Because even when you’ve written something beautiful, it’s unlikely that you’ll be rewarded with fame and glory and big piles of cash. And even if you are embraced and adored, you’ll start at zero again every time you sit down to write a new book. You have to cultivate your faith in yourself and your love for writing, almost like your own private religion. You have to savor the process. If that sounds awful (or just impossible) to you, you might want to consider another path. But here you are in school, with lots of time to try your hand at it, more time than you may ever have again. Why not just try?

Polly

Previously: Ask Polly: Should I Drop Out Of College?

Are you haunted by your relative insignificance in the world? Are you powerless to change your fate? Write to Polly and find out!

Heather Havrilesky (aka Polly Esther) is The Awl’s existential advice columnist. She’s also a regular contributor to The New York Times Magazine, and is the author of the memoir Disaster Preparedness (Riverhead 2011). She blogs here about scratchy pants, personality disorders, and aged cheeses. Photo by Alex T.

I Will Spend The Rest Of My Day, Week, Month, Year, Etc. Staring At This Interactive, High Resolution, Panoramic View From Top Of The Burj Khalifa Building And So Should You

Go here and look at this. (Unless you are acrophobic. In fact, even if you are acrophobic. Consider it exposure therapy. I swear, it is so awesome.) [Via]

Our best wishes to the folks at Time Inc., who are enduring a really terrible and sustained day of major layoffs, which is at least maybe a small relief after suffering through endless waiting, knowing this was coming for weeks. Hmm. Nope. Actually, probably not. If you have a Time Inc. friend, buy them a drink today.

Today’s hideousness was brought to you by the fine folks at McKinsey & Company, and the management team of Time Inc.