Your Survival Guide to 2023
Your Survival Guide to 2023
This year will be as grim as, well, Grimm. Here's your way out!
Everyone seems to think 2023 could be as grim as the Grinch on a cheap night out. The likely causes of misery and future forces of evil are almost endless. Recession, failing services, and food inflation - cabbage is still cheap, full of nutrients and can light up the new year’s firework display. Oh and a we shouldn’t forget a news media hell bent on ‘keeping us on edge’ or as Prince Harry says building villains everywhere. Or at least everywhere Murdoch. As always, we thought we might provide you a small antidote or an enticing escape hatch.
What we need is a survival guide through this hell. You know, one that might actually work.
The Letts Journal’s Survival Guide to 2023
1. Stay Away!
If 2020 to 2022 were the years of the staycation the secret to 2023 could well be a ‘Stay Away’. Cut off from all the bad news and avoid all that negativity. Depression is generally triggered by negative thoughts - you know like your mother (thank you Freud), your father (thank you Jim Beam) or your job (thank you zero hours contracts). So cut away and change your perspective.
The secret could be as simple as not returning from your current holiday. Be sure you turned the heat off back home and the energy savings will cover that Airbnb in Burundi. Staying kills two birds with one stone - supporting the poorest country in the world while at the same time helping the CEO at Airbnb prove that he was not ‘at the bottle’ (Jim Beam again?) when he staked the company’s future on remote working from ‘anywhere’ so long as it is with an Airbnb host. Alternatively slum it at LettsRetreat!
2. Stay in cash!
Well, we all know what happened when you chucked your money at Crypto or oil futures or Sam Bankman-Fried/Dennis-the-Menace-from-Beano’s bail money!
Our tip is simple. Just stick to cash - preferably the stuff that you can put under the mattress or a nice little tax efficient ISA from your local bank - not that there are any left. Even with inflation at 13.3% keep it under the mattress and your dollars, euros or pound sterling will lose you a tonne less than that nice little Nasdaq stock your nephew who works at Meta shoved you into. If you have Euro’s you might want to holiday in Croatia before they figure out they can hike the price of everything like Italy did after joining the European currency and the price of a cappuccino went from a couple of lira to a share in SpaceX. Mind you the latest capital raise of $750 million by SpaceX smacks a little of desperation given it won’t even by them a toilet on one of their rockets.
3. Stay near Thor!
Thor the walrus has rocked Britain with his relaxed and inquisitive approach to life. Apparently recently down from the Arctic, his most recent Britpop appearance came weeks after he was spotted resting up on Southampton beach. Thor was also seen off the coast of Netherlands, Belgium and France last month proving that he has gotten the message about ‘staying away’. He also reminds us that wildlife is the new cool. Thanks climate crisis! Perhaps invest in some of that rather than SpaceX.
Most of all, we suggest you become a Thor groupie. It could prove the best excuse ever for yet more remote working. Does Vodafone work in the Arctic? It sure doesn’t here!
4. Stay on the woke side (ouch)!
There will be so much sh*t thrown at you in 2023 that the simplest, happiest course might be to try to stay on the right side of things - you know like paying your taxes or sharing Zelensky meme’s or avoiding another Trump rally near downtown D.C. It might be simpler to stay with things that won’t get you fired or off the dinner party invite list like updating your email signature for your gender.
Try non-controversial actions. Plant a tree, install a heat pump, avoid running over badgers at night. Equally supporting Meghan could prove a bit two sided so probably best to smile in silence while talking out loud about your disappointment in Twitter, Putin and the price of oil. When even the dedicated souls at Extinction Rebellion have stepped back from gluing themselves to priceless works of art and reclaiming the power of the conventional large demonstration its time for us mere mortals to keep to the uncontroversial beaten path.
Oh - and wherever possible stick with independent businesses - at least they give a hoot if you have a customer complaint whereas BT, Vodafone, Barclays and any other large corporate has long figured out how to rig their systems to listen, pretend to be polite and do absolutely nothing. And, yep, it's programmed to pull you into a vortex of an infinite loop where nothing changes. It's such a specialism that BT even has a Chairman & CEO Complaints Specialist! (that one wasn’t bit of witty repartee - the guy just called me).
Show your support for the nurses and ambulance people because you never know when the next pandemic might pop up and if you ever want to get on a train again in Britain then you might want to get behind the railway workers as well. And if you want to have a future in work you might want to take a computer course and become one. After all AI will replace us all so if you can’t beat them - join them!
5. Stay out of politics!
As Boris Johnson has proven 2023 might be the year to stay away from politics. There’s a killing to be made speaking to middle aged american insurance executives. Its only one night in Kansas which is a better gig then Hancock’s - eating cockroaches in Australia. And after all, it’s all down hill from here. Rep. Kevin McCarthy could not agree more. He used to be top of the pile for the Republican party - now destined for the scrap heap. The trick is to get out Johnson/Gangnam style not the Kwarteng/Truss method hence avoiding underwater snacks and scorpion pits ala Hancock.
We may as well accept that most of politics is broken and will take years to fix. So turn it off until then. Say goodbye to the tabloids and political commentators. Switch off social media - twitter style! And when those politicians come knocking on the door - keep it closed! Remind them that 2023 is all about ‘me time’.
Me, myself and my Letts Journal. Happy 2023!
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