I picked this book up on a clearance table and I love it. Is it a book? Is it a coloring book? Is it art? Is it food for people with dangerous minds? Yes, all of these. ( )

This book is dedicated to my chronic anxiety.

You are literally always there for me, and you accidentally forced me to make this book to help save me from you. You deserve a vacation.

No, really. Go. We're fine here.

And more importantly, it's dedicated to the people on the Internet who sit with me (in spirit) while I hide away from the world. You have the key to my pillow fort. Always.

I recently told a friend that I have been struggling with depression for two years. (I mean, I've always had depression in my life; it went to all the schools with me, goes to work with me, sits in that one corner of my living room all the time. But the last two years it has decided, for reasons even I don't even fully understand, to take the proverbial baseball bat to my ability to function, and it's been a little rough. So that's what I was relating.) She paused, then asked me if I'd looked into getting medicated. Because people generally assume that's where we are with depression. That we have a pill to fix it now, and if you haven't gotten it fixed then you're probably choosing to suffer. I don't relate this to blame my friend, but just as a general cultural reference for where we are with the acceptance of this sort of illness in society.

Enter Jenny Lawson. She has now written three books relating her personal mental and emotional struggles. This one happens to be a coloring book made of pictures that she largely drew while suffering from panic attacks on her book tour for the last one. And that really is what makes it work. She gets it. She has been through it. There is the occasional platitude in here, but they are interspersed with musings on what it might have been like to title the book DON'T POISON EVERYONE, the fury of terrified rabbits, and the practicality of having someone to rob if things don't improve. I am deeply grateful for this woman, and I hope she continues to share her misadventures with anxiety and depression for a long time, both because I like to laugh along with her, and because the world continues to need her. To need people who will stand up and say, "I'm broken, and you can't fix me, but that's fine." It's a stance I try to take myself, and I enjoy and admire the company.

Anyway, good book. Have a picture.



10/14/17: Full review done.
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9/26/17: I don't know if it turned out to be a sign, but that was the book I damn well needed right now. Full review to come.
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7/19/16: Surely this is a sign that 2017 will be an improvement over 2016. Yes? ( )

Anxiety? Coloring? Yes please! ( )

Fun book full of inspiring words and pages to color. ( )

Holy shit you guys! The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck can blatantly fuck off while I re-read this! The greatest book saying you're a little weird and a little scarred and a little scared and none of that matters cause...you are here. That's it. Just here. Just being you. Just trying. Oh, and there's pretty coloring bookish type pictures with inspirational quotes and shit so now I feel fancy-esque and just typed this whole thing with my pinkie out! ( )