ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This book would not be possible without the tireless shepherding of Noah Ballard at Curtis Brown and the enthusiastic championing of Matthew Daddona at Plume. Those two guys really wanted to see You Blew It! come together, and that's mainly why it did. Emma Sweeney was instrumental as well, and we owe a big loving embrace to the entire team at Plume. From Josh Gondelman: I'd like to extend deep and sincere thanks to the following people for the following reasons: To my mom and dad for being fully supportive of my creative endeavors as long as they provided me health care. To my sister Jenna for being the actual best sibling and also for going halves on birthday gifts for my parents during my years of wild nonsuccess. To Maris for encouraging me, but more important for inspiring me by setting an example for a brilliant dedicated professional and human. To the grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins who have always cheered me on and who've even stopped asking, "You make a living at that?" To Chenoa, Tiffany, Taryn, and Marcus for being pals and being world-beaters. To all the great writing instructors I had at Brandeis for cultivating my silly jokes into complete sentences.

To the comedy communities of Boston and New York for not putting up with any crap. And to the Arlington Infant Toddler Center for putting up with all of my crap. From Joe Berkowitz: Large swaths of this book were written in the following locations: Breukelen Coffee House in Crown Heights, Whole Foods in Tribeca, Aroma Espresso Bar on Church Street, and Starbucks on Chambers Street. Thanks to the supreme leniency of my editor at Fast Company, Teressa Iezzi, for giving me time to work on this book. Thanks to Gabriele O'Connor, my moon and stars, who gave invaluable feedback and encouragement throughout the whole process and beyond. Howard Berkowitz and Risé Page were nothing but supportive when I wrote a story in first grade about sentient pink clouds and it runner-upped in some bullshit competitionand they continue to be supportive to this day. Rita Pagenkopf suggested I become an English teacher perhaps one (thousand) too many times but only because she cared about me a lot. Thanks to Phil and Allison, Dana, Lauren, and Debbie for being family.

Thanks to the residents of Witkem (Kyla Ernst-Alper, Molly Ernst-Alper, Mendel Rabinovitch, Austin Mitchell, Melissa Corning, and Alex Weinberg) for positive vibes. Thanks to my therapist, even though a distinct, lifelong lack of Lexapro created invaluable "research" for the topic at hand. AUTHORS' NOTE Hello, and thank you for making it to the inside part of our book! If you liked the words on the outside, you'll be dazzled by the sheer number of them to come. We hope you find it cozy and hospitable in here. After all, the world is a brutal place. Even if you, like us (Josh and Joe), have largely been exempt from life's most grisly horrors, your daily routine likely consists of onslaughts of unpleasantness punctuated by brief periods of relief, like a Pixies song. Also, if you're anything like us, lots of this discomfort is your own fault. Wait! Don't go! We promise things get more fun! (Well, at least in the book.

We can't vouch for the rest of your life.) What we mean to say is, even if you have never served as a child soldier, found yourself unjustly imprisoned, or lost a loved one to a global pandemic, you have faced your own challenges. Every person's plight looks relatively tame next to somebody else's. Although if you've continued to play competitive tennis after losing a leg in a shark attack, you are definitely a better person than either of us. Sometimes these obstacles to happiness are external. Perhaps you accidentally touched a pigeon with your bare hand or rode a bus next to a couple in the midst of a breakup. Much of our daily suffering, though, we bring upon ourselves. We show up to work hungover.

We forget to call our parents on their birthdays. We spend embarrassing sums of money on cold-press juicers that we'll "totally use like every day." No one makes us do these things; they're mistakes we make over and over of our own free will. But it's not our fault. Or, to put it another way, it is. There is literally no one else to blame. We (Joe and Josh) have written this book as a catalog of the ways we all make our lives harsher, broker, achier, sadder, angrier, smellier, more awkward, more embarrassing, and otherwise worse. For instance, have you ever had to convince your more successful acquaintances to write a blurb for your book cover? Not fun! We hope that by reading this book, you will feel less like a failure (even if you recently lost your life savings trying to develop an app that's "like Facebook for pugs") and less alone (even if you live by yourself in a studio apartment in Kotzebue, Alaska).

Please, join us as we stare deep into our souls, shake our heads, and vow to do whatever the soul equivalent of a million crunches is next year. So lie back on your futon, fainting sofa, or whatever item of furniture you use for relaxation, and let our words massage away your shame. At least while you're reading, you can't screw anything else up. Unless you have somewhere to be. Do you have somewhere to be? What time is it? Eh. It's probably too late to make it even if you leave now. Look at that. As always, you blew it! FRIENDS, FAMILY, AND EVERYONE ELSE WHO DRIVES YOU CRAZY CHAPTER 1 Friends Like These Every year after your twenty-second birthday, it becomes more difficult to make new friends.

Nobody told you this when you were a child because you would've cried about it until given ice cream or a pony. As children, two people can form an intense bond over simply not being the kid who threw up on the monkey bars that time. Once we're old enough to file our own taxes, though, we've become conditioned to assume everyone we meet has enough friends already. As hard as it is to make new friends in adulthood, though, it's easier than ever to lose them. Friendship dynamics evolve over time. In high school, half your friends hated each other and only stuck together because, well, what else were they gonna dohang out at a cooler high school, where the principal spends most of his time with a small group of students at a nearby fifties-themed diner? Adults don't have to do that. Our busy lives both explain and excuse losing touch. All it takes now is one perceived slight, and we never text that buddy from urban kickball league ever again.

Of course, this disposability isn't true of old friends. Anyone whose wedding you were in won't kick you to the curb because you declined to "like" one of their Facebook status updates. (Although he or she probably will move to Scarsdale and breed, thus defriending you by natural causes.) It's the new people in your life you actually worry about. A blossoming adult friendship is a delicate soufflé under constant threat of collapsing under its own weight and turning into egg chum. But unlike the soufflé we destroyed back in home ec class, with friends you don't get credit just for showing up. Making Plans and Breaking Plans Even if much of friendship can now be literally phoned in, most of us still like to actually meet up from time to time and gaze at our phones together in person. Every year, though, it seems there are fewer hours in each day and more reasons not to leave the house.

Spending time in the same room as your friends used to be an essential part of forging a community, and still is, but now you can get that same feeling of togetherness from protesting a sitcom cancellation while doing five other things and not wearing pants. If people meet up less than they once did, it's also because making plans has started to feel like a cold-war showdown of who will cancel first. It's pretty much expected that before any two people meet up they will first cancel back and forth five or six times, like two awful ships in the night piloted by first-time ship captains. One part of the problem is scheduling. If you pick a date too soon, your friend probably can't make it; pick one too far out, and you come across like your own executive assistant trying to pencil someone in for a "deskside." Choosing a time frame is crucial, though, because everybody knows that "Let's meet up sometime" is code for "See you never." Getting together and doing stuff always sounds like something Future You would do. Future You is down for whatever.

On the day of, though, Current You is more "down comforter," and doesn't want to go anywherewhich is often the optimal outcome. But bailing on friends too often puts you on that slippery slope toward becoming the Boy Who Cried RSVP. That's why there's a protocol for cancellation. On the day you're supposed to meet with a friend, it's fairly standard to check in and confirm that neither of you has died nor had a conflicting appendectomy come up. Some people even offer an out during this check-in, a chance to reschedule if need be. Any mention of a rain check, though, is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Unless you're seriously pumped about after-work drinks, it seems almost rude to not reschedule when your friend offers. He or she probably just wanted to put this off until later but didn't want to be the jerk who pulled the trigger.

It's like a vampire playing coy about needing to be invited in until you just give up and throw.