I’ve heard the phrase “everything happens for a reason” thousands of times. From strangers on Match.com to friends and family, it’s a very common phrase, and I don’t doubt that people believe it. We’re human. We want to feel like our lives have meaning, that we are part of something bigger than themselves.

I personally believe that we most certainly are part of something much bigger than ourselves–something so much bigger, in fact, that everything in our lives does not actually happen for a reason. Good things, bad things, little things, big things. Things happen, and we give them reason.

I don’t think this is a black and white rule–in fact, it’s mostly a fuzzy gray area. I think some things do actually happen for a reason. But we have absolutely no idea what those things are.

Why is this important for me to share? For that matter, why is it a pet peeve of mine? Because I think there are times when it’s a hurtful, dishonest thing to say or think, and there are other times, some of them life-defining moments, when personal responsibility is extremely important. Some examples of the two:

1. When a child falls down and scrapes his knee, did that happen for a reason? When a child gets cancer, is that for a reason? What about an adult? When you’re playing a videogame and you achieve a high score, is that for a greater reason? What about reading this blog entry? Is there a reason for that? My point is that “everything” is a huge, all-encompassing word. Think about it on a cellular or molecular level. Think about how many “things” happen every second, every millisecond. Do you truly believe that every one of those things happens for a reason? I believe in God, and I believe in reason, but I don’t believe that every single little thing happens for a reason. I believe that when a child scrapes his knee, God didn’t push him down to teach him a lesson. Maybe it’s just me, but I believe in a God that’s much bigger than a schoolyard bully.
2. When you succeed at something, does that just “happen” out of thin air, or was the reason that you worked hard at it and you persevered and you deserve it? And when you fail at something, does that just “happen,” or did you personally come up short? There is great strength in admitting that you don’t have complete control over your life, because you don’t. You could get hit by a car tomorrow and there’s a 97% chance that you couldn’t have done anything to prevent it. But that 3% matters. Take responsibility for that 3% and make the world what you want it to be. The world is not out to get you.

I believe that everything does not happen for a reason. Rather, I believe that some things happen for a reason. What do you believe?

The soundtrack is awesome. There are three or four recurring songs that are intense and unique and kind of a mix of modern alternative and 80s pop. I knew as I was watching the movie that I wanted to buy the songs.

But when I hopped on iTunes, I saw that all but one of the songs had the dreaded label “album only.” The same was the case over on Amazon. Thus, to get the four songs I really wanted, I had to buy an album of extraneous sound effects. I’m happy to pay $.99 or even $1.29 for a song, but $14.99 for four songs? Not gonna do it.

Why do some studios do this? Do they really think it makes people more likely to buy the album if they package all the songs together? Rather, I think it makes people more likely to illegally download the songs they want. I don’t do that (really), but I think studios are leaving money on the table as a result.

The whole idea behind digital music is that you get to pick what you like and leave out what you don’t. “Album only” goes completely against that.

I don’t run into this all that often anymore, but it still happens from time to time. What’s the last time it happened to you, and how did you respond?

(Now I’m thinking I should have made this a True Tale of Survival and responded by running around naked. Next time…)

Can you guess which one I tried?

The other day a friend told me about a new line of drinks they had discovered. It’s this brand called Neuro, and each of the 8 different varieties contain a different mix of ingredients that have very different effects.

For example, my friend had recently tried the NeuroSleep drink, and she said she passed out on her couch halfway through the bottle. Usually I’m pretty dubious about these types of drinks, but her testimonial made me curious.

So I ran out to Walgreens to buy a few bottles. Naturally I had to try NeuroGasm, which “provides you with the right type of energy when you need it most.”

However, one sip in and I realized that the drink contained one of my biggest pet peeves: fake sugar.

Fake sugar is the bane of my existence. I’ll get a headache within 30 minutes of drinking or eating something containing fake sugar.Plus, to me, it doesn’t taste good at all.

Really, this is a personal pet peeve–I’m not trying to convince someone that they shouldn’t consume drinks with fake sugar. It’s just annoying when I encounter what would be a perfectly delicious drink and then I realize that it contains sucralose or one of its variants.

Does anyone else have this problem?

This was before Monster.com and craigslist; companies posted jobs in the classifieds section of the newspaper back then. I was pursuing a degree in marketing at that point, so I went through the paper and circled all the marketing jobs.

I sent my resume to a company that was looking for a “marketing account executive.” I thought I was aiming a bit high, but it was worth a shot.

During the first “interview,” I found it a little odd that the manager wouldn’t tell me what the job was or what the company did. He kept saying that in less than a year, I could be running an office of my own, just like him. I told him that I was a rising sophomore in college and that I was just looking for a summer job; he winked and said, “We’ll see if you want to go back to school after a summer on the job.” Clearly he thought the company was great , and I didn’t have any other prospects yet, so I agreed to come back at 8:00 am the next day for a follow up interview.

Can you name what Amy Adams was selling on The Office?

When I showed up that morning, I was assigned to my interviewer, who ushered me to his car with two other men. My interviewer was a young guy, maybe 20 or 21, and the other two men were haggard and older. I asked where we were going, and the young guy said, “This is part of the interview.”

Then we drove off.

The young guy peppered me with questions for a good 10 minutes before I could turn the questions back around to him. I finally got the first clear answer about what they did: They sold coupon packs for Pizza Hut. $20 for a sheet of coupons.

“Oh, okay,” I said. I knew immediately I wasn’t going to take the job. “So, are you going to watch me make a sale and then we’ll go back to the office?”

The young guy shook his head. “We’re making sales all day.”

It hit me. This “marketing interview” was actually me shadowing coupon salesmen for an entire workday. I was about to spend eight hours going door to door in a terrible neighborhood.

I considered trying to get out of it. Calling a cab or my mother. But I told myself to suck it up, deal with it, and try to learn something. You know what I learned?

1. Many jobs listed under “marketing” are actually “sales.” Dinky little companies flat-out lie about this. There is a huge difference between the two. Marketing involves developing a product or brand and figuring out how to tell the world about it. Sales is nothing other than getting someone to give you money for something else. All marketers are salesmen. Most salesmen are not marketers.
2. Don’t apply to work at any company that isn’t completely transparent about what they do in the job description. If they’re hiding something, it’s for a reason.
3. There are a surprising number of people home during the day in poor neighborhoods. Thank you, welfare.
4. People in poor neighborhoods are surprisingly friendly to random people, even salesmen.

28. Out of shape people who don’t take the stairs. (Or park in the farthest parking spot every time they go to the grocery store. Jared didn’t lose weight by driving to Subway, people.)

29. People who don’t use cruise control on the highway. (I used to be one of those people before I understood cruise control, and now I know how annoying I was.)

30. Unemployed people who watch TV all day. (Time is a HUGE gift. Don’t wallow when you could be doing something. Anything. Make something for Etsy. Write a handwritten letter to everyone you know. Volunteer. You’ll eventually get a job, but you won’t get that time back.)

31. People who forward “urgent” conspiracy theory e-mails to everyone in their address book without checking them out on Snopes.com first.

32. People who smoke with kids in the car. Or the house. That’s just…despicable.

33. People who click on dubious links in e-mails or on Twitter. (Computer viruses persist because we enable them.)

You microwave leftovers–let’s say spaghetti–for what seems like more than enough time. While it’s cooking, you set the coffee table with your milk, your diluted juice, your baby spinach salad (keeping one eye on it so Biddy doesn’t steal a leaf). Then you pull the steaming hot plate out of the oven.

You settle down at the table, turn on Game of Thrones, pile pillows around you, stick a fork into the spaghetti, and bring a well-balanced bite of noodle, sauce, and meat to your mouth.

And it’s cold.

Really cold. As if somehow you didn’t microwave it at all.

But you know you did. The plate is hot. You can see steam coming off the spaghetti. It has been heated. And yet it’s not hot.

How does this happen?!

I walk in with my grocery list on my iPhone, ready for a quick jaunt through the store. I grab a basket, thinking I only have a few items to buy.

20 minutes later, I’m stumbling through the store with a 40-pound basket in one hand, a ream of toilet paper in the other, and some Party Timez cat food dangling from my mouth (unopened).

Seriously, this happens way more often than it should. I think maybe it stems from an article I read that claimed that something like 30% of all grocery store cart handles are smeared with a discernible amount of human feces. I’m not into that. I think some of that comes from babies riding in the cart (which is a total pet please–remember how awesome riding in the cart was when you were a kid?), and babies can’t fit into handheld baskets.

But really, I just need to acknowledge that I’m going to buy more than I expect, and dislocating my shoulder while dragging a basket across the floor simply isn’t worth it. I should just suck it up and deal with the cart handle poop.

Either that or get another roommate who will grocery shop for me. I’ll work on that.

Remember when your e-mail actually said, "You've Got Mail!" every time you got a new e-mail?

Wanda was my high school bus driver. Skinny as a toothpick but less brittle, Wanda had been driving buses for years. She had a long tangle of blonde hair and a crooked smile, and she took pride in driving us kids to school every day. She even took us to McDonald’s for breakfast once a semester.

Wanda had a nickname for everyone, and I had the good fortune of earning two of them: Cutebuns and Sweet Cheeks. She was referring to my butt, as it were. That may seem sketchy to you, but I don’t think Wanda even knew what my butt looked like, with my backpack hanging as low as it did. I think she just thought they were funny nicknames and she knew I’d play along.

You might recall that it was about 15 years ago that instant messaging got big. Everyone was on AOL IM. So the day came that I had to pick a screenname.

These days, most people use their real names online. Thank you, Facebook and Gmail. But back in 1996, most people thought if you used your real name online, an identity thief would immediately reach through the screen, grab your wallet, and punch you in the gut.

With these concerns in mind, I chose Cutebuns09 as my IM screenname (and yes, there were 8 other Cutebuns already taken. That should have been a sign that I was choosing the wrong name).

Of course, I didn’t stop there. I soon added a Yahoo account and an eBay account (what I was doing with eBay in the late 1990s, I don’t know. I don’t want to know). I’m sure there are other accounts out there with Cutebuns09 on them too.

When I went to college, I gained a Wash U e-mail address with my name. But we still used IM back then, so I was still Cutebuns09. And on eBay, every purchase I made using Cutebuns09 improved my buyer rating to the point that starting from scratch would be a huge step back.

Finally Facebook and Gmail came along, and I’m officially Jamey Stegmaier wherever I go. But Yahoo still thinks of me as Cutebuns09, much to the chagrin of the other guys in my Yahoo fantasy baseball league. So does eBay.

I have no doubt that I’m going to be 90 years old, hovercrafting between iReality oxygen chambers and Dippin’ Dots stores, and I’ll still run into people who identify me through their Yahoo 3D Contact Lenses as Cutebuns09.

Somewhere, Wanda will be smiling.

I’m sure I’m not alone with this. Come on, fess up on that first IM or e-mail username that you’re too embarrassed to use now.

Fact 1: When we mishear someone, especially if we don’t yet know that we misheard them, the results are hilarious…in our own minds.

Fact 2: The words we mishear are rarely hilarious to anyone but ourselves.

It’s really important to distinguish between these two facts. Things you mishear should fall into the category of dreams: Really amusing to ourselves, rarely amusing to anyone else. I would go as far as to say that the only dreams that should be shared are sex dreams.

Think of the last time someone told you what they thought you said. Think about the whole conversation. You’re telling a story, and someone says, “What?” You repeat the last line of your story.

What should happen next is that you’re allowed to continue with your story. Instead, the other person deems misperception important enough to completely interrupt you and tell you what they thought they heard. Keep in mind that this information isn’t important in reality at all. They are telling you something that does not exist anywhere else in the universe except in their head.

And so you have to take a break from your story to show at least some interest in what the person thought you said. You have to do something to segue back into your story.

Now, there are exceptions. I have been told some truly hilarious misheard phrases. But it’s pretty rare. Rare enough that if you mishear someone, save the phrase in your mind to put on Facebook or Twitter later. But don’t interrupt your friend. Let them tell their story.

Also see Pet Peeve #24: The Pronunciation of “Thames”

After I waited through the obligatory ad (does anyone actually watch these ads, or do you just flip to a different tab in your browser like me?), the video began…and it was game analysis. Nothing more. Just analysis.

This is the worst.

We tune into video websites to see action, not reaction. Now, to be fair, websites make or break themselves based on reaction. I frequent the movie scoop site Ain’t It Cool News not because it gives me better information than other sites, but because I’m genuinely interested in the site’s writers’ thoughts and opinions.

If you’re not into movies, perhaps you enjoy celebrity gossip. You don’t want to watch a video of someone talking about Lady Gaga’s latest outfit. Rather, you want to see her walk around in a dress made of midgets.

So ESPN, don’t tease me with videos that turn out to be analysis instead of highlights. You do this so often in the fall during college football season. Obtain the highlights and then show them to me–that’s why I go to your site. If you don’t do this better than other sports aggregate sites, you’re making yourself vulnerable to more appealing options.

(Bonus: In the version of the “True Tale of Survival” that I started writing in my head as I was freezing at the game tonight, I was going to make it clear that I was not going to strip naked and run around screaming. That would have been counterproductive, given the cold.)