.SOMETIMES RAW.

For people in relationships or in love, February 14 is a day to celebrate romance with a heart-shaped box of chocolates and a thoughtfully written card. But for those in less clear-cut dynamics, Valentine’s Day creates a difficult quandary: How to acknowledge your insignificant other without jeopardizing the carefully crafted gray area of your situationship. They’re definitely not your Valentine, but they’re still… something. And surely that something deserves a card too? Get him a card. Something like this, maybe?!

And, for everybody who celebrates:

Ladies, are you ready for your man to commit to you with the same diligence and enthusiasm he pours into his War Movies binge-watching?

Then optimize your relationship this Valentine’s Day with this date guide.

This list has something for everybody—long-term lovers, a new fling, and everybody else. 

Morning coffee date.
Why wait till dark to get the romantic juices flowing? Gaze deep into your lover’s eyes as he gazes over your shoulder at the low-angle morning sun. For the absolute best result: make sure the coffee machine is broken, the dog took a nice shit in the house and you are both late for work. The photons flooding his retinas at this point may help regulate his circadian rhythm. If you add one or two requests at this point you might have sweet conversations all day AND night. 

Kitchen kisses.
First, you kiss him and then you watch if his enzymes have trouble breaking down the macronutrients in those meat-free turkey soy balls and the matcha soy latte you serve him for breakfast. Let the chaos unfold. 

Hit the dance floor.
Start dancing early in the morning. Involve him. Then tell him about a research that shows dancing promotes activity in the neural circuit connecting your motor cortex to your adrenal glands, activating receptors on your vagus nerve that in turn excite brain areas that release norepinephrine, creating a brain-to-body-to-brain “arousal loop” that can improve energy and alertness. If the Tango you perform in front of him doesn’t turn him on, nothing will. 

Lavish him with gifts.
Move over, Godiva Chocolate. This year, ditch the chocolates and spoil your sweetheart with a six-month supply of omega-3 fatty acids. Don’t forget the heart-shaped pill case.

Visit a cozy cocktail bar.
Go ahead, pick your poison. Hand him his cocktail of choice, then whip out your notepad because you will spend the next 90 minutes explaining how alcohol increases cortisol in the adrenal glands, negatively impacts gut health, and is, technically speaking, a poison. 

Sweat it out.
Maximize your longevity and love connection with a steamy hot yoga session or spin class. Feeling strong? Level up with kickboxing. It’s a perfect way to let out some pent-up frustration—just shut your eyes and imagine him whispering in your ear, “Actually, today at work….” Boom, knockout!

Ask him many questions.
The quickest way to your man’s heart is through the right ventricle by way of his tricuspid valve, as he explained (with diagrams) on your first date. The second quickest? Ask him whether microplastics disrupt the body’s fragile hormonal balance. Ask him if he wants (more) children. Even on the first date. 

Deliberate cold exposure.
Picture this: You two in an oversized tin trough filled with enough ice to sink an early twentieth-century sea vessel. Can you imagine anything hotter? And yes, your body might go numb. But you’ll still feel all sorts of butterflies.

Couples therapy.
Are you and your partner struggling to connect? A couples therapy session might help facilitate better communication, deepen your relationship, and SAVE. That’s right, visit sometimesraw.com for 15 percent off your first counselling session if you buy all of my books. That’s S-O-M-E-T-I-M-E-S-R-A-W. dot com! Don’t wait!

Leave him alone.
Who are you kidding? Give your man what he really wants: a quiet night alone. Get him a beer, a steak, and turn on Black Hawk Down. Light yourself a candle, get a cup of tea, some chocolate, and a good book. The best part? You get a night to yourself, too which is all you want anyway.

Happy Valentine’s Day to all the Lovebirds out there. Enjoy the day. Treat yourself to a day at the SPA. I know I will. And buy yourself some roses. You deserve it!

Who am I to offer life advice, but here goes. In a fun way, because humor and smiling wins. Enjoy!

How do I live longer?
Stress is a leading cause of early death. Avoid stress by spending every single day thinking about what you need to do to not die. If that doesn’t work, try meditation. Close your eyes, take deep breaths, and remember that each second of meditation is a battle in the war on Father Time. Good luck, soldier.

How important is sleep?
Nothing is more important than a good night’s sleep. So-called “friends” will invite you out for long nights of drinks, dancing, and “companionship.” Recognize this danger and return to your bed or couch.

So what’s a good sleep schedule?
Wake up at 4:30 a.m., no exceptions. The smug satisfaction of telling everyone you wake up at 4:30 a.m. will power you for at least one hundred years.

What’s your best tip?
Research shows nasal breathing is healthier than mouth breathing. Duct tape your mouth shut and only breathe through your nose. When someone asks if you’re being held hostage, blink twice to let them know you heard about this on a podcast.

What should my diet look like?
Meat would be healthy, but it’s full of microplastics. Fruits and vegetables would be healthy, but they’re doused in pesticides. Play it safe with a diet of powders, potions, shakes, and sludge. The healthiest foods come from cardboard boxes you can order on your phone. Keep in mind, strong muscles need protein. Chug protein like your life depends on it, because it literally does. Consume so much protein your kidneys can’t process it, then when your doctor tells you to stop, say, “I bet that’s exactly what Big Pharma wants me to do, isn’t it?” And of course, never consume seed oils. Don’t even google “seed oils.” If you don’t actually know what seed oils are, they can’t hurt you.

Can modern medicine be trusted?
Doctors make money by keeping you sick. Beat the system and get all your medical advice from the Internet. Take as many supplements as humanly possible. Bonus points if those supplements are illegal in your country.

Any advice for long-term brain health?
Keep your mind young and nimble by reading widely. Read books about history, self-sufficiency, how to grow things, how to be at peace with yourself, and how not to kill your kid(s). Solve The New York Times crossword puzzle daily.

Do you recommend skincare? I want to look younger too.
If you look good, you feel good. Get a skincare regimen to prevent signs of aging. Dry skin? Moisturize. Gray hair? Dye it. Sagging skin? Botox and Filler up as much as possible. Don’t worry about side effects. Don’t appreciate the way you look.

Is sun exposure okay?
The sun is poisonous. It will give you cancer, or worse, wrinkles. Avoid sun exposure at all costs. Drown yourself in sunscreen. Live underground. Find a pack of moles and slowly embed yourself in their society. Teach the moles about the benefits of intermittent fasting.

What about exercise?
For a long, healthy life, lift weights. Model your health on strong men who are built like commercial freezers and top looking models with zero flaws. Obviously, they are never photoshopped, and they ALL look exactly like in the picture in those dumb beauty magazines you read. Look for the classic markers of good health: taut skin, bloodshot eyes, and hair growing out of places you didn’t know existed.

What if I am in a toxic relationship?
Get out and stay single. Also, have no kids. Like zero. No marriage, and no kids.

Just give me your last piece of advice.
Death is a prison. To live forever is to break free. We must escape and fly high, like Icarus. Icarus escaped prison. Icarus flew high. He challenged the gods. I haven’t read the whole story, but that sounds like a pretty cool guy to base my life around. You should too.

It’s 9:45 p.m. You put in an extra, late spurt – for supper, you had a toasted sandwich at your desk, brushing the occasional crumb from the keyboard while you kept at it. It was difficult. But now it’s done. You have made the progress you had hoped to. Probably, it will all start again in the morning, but you will be working off a solid base – it won’t be the familiar scramble to catch up.

You are worn out. You had to make yourself stick at it – but now you are glad you did. There is a gentle ache in the middle of your back. You yawn and turn your neck from side to side; you stretch around and try to massage an awkward spot below your left shoulder blade. In a while, you will need to head off to bed – but not just yet. It is nice to linger and spin out the moment of repletion. It is lovely to saunter about and make a cup of tea. You might flick indifferently through the newspaper. You can’t get engaged: your brain has done its work and shies away from any further efforts.

The pleasure we feel after a good but hard day’s work is linked to a positive experience of willpower. It was tempting to break off; you could have put it off until tomorrow (you have often done that in the past); you could have become distracted (which is achingly familiar); you could have stayed physically at your desk but actually been fantasising about trips to in New York and Japan next year or finding out what your favorite author is up to at the moment. But you didn’t. You stuck with the big thing.

It’s also to do with a sense of mastery: in anticipation, we slightly feared the task. But we got on top of this tricky thing, and we tamed it. There were points when it felt we might not: it was too difficult; a solution seemed elusive; there were too many things we were trying to get right at the same time; a mass of details needed to be reduced to a simple, coherent shape – though it wasn’t at all obvious what this could be. An awkward email needed a tactful but firm response; a refusal had to be delivered without a sting; a criticism needed to be put forward delicately but very clearly. A hunch had to be turned into a proposal – and there is always a difficult point at which what had, from a distance, seemed like a good idea starts to look much less impressive close up, yet it was onto something …. only what exactly? Maybe you had to revise a report, and you dreaded unpicking work you had already done and facing the same old issues once again. We have been labouring against the normal forces of disintegration. Things that were scattered and messy have been brought together, harmonised, tidied up, elucidated. We have done something fundamental. We have held back the tide of chaos.

The pleasure of a long, productive project hints at a bigger theme. It is not simply about this moment and the particular tasks we have polished off. It is a promise that other problems can be faced as well. We are reminded of a capacity within ourselves to deal with difficulties, to get on top of challenges and to keep going until they are under control. We are seeing in ourselves an antidote to the fear of drifting. We naturally worry we will be swamped by demands; we know our own unfortunate tendency to let things fester. But right now, we are conscious of something else. We are capable of rousing ourselves, of focus and of sustained efforts. We can stick with something difficult and keep going through the temptations to break off and seek distraction. We have been just a little bit heroic, and we know it, and it feels nice.

Exhaustion is – all too often – a reason to have to give up because one’s strength has failed too soon. The brain starts to melt when really we should be getting on with a big task; the mind is worn out, while the problem remains unsolved. Instead, now, we are experiencing honourable or worthy tiredness. Instead of getting annoyed with ourselves for lacking energy, our pleasant tiredness feels like the natural and just reward for our labours. It’s setting us up for a good night’s sleep.

With this being said, my new book has been born.

Order it from any bookstore or on Amazon.

https://www.buchschmiede.at/app/book/263072-Daniela-Henry-The-Average-of-All-Possible-Things;bookType=PB

Thank you so much for reading my stuff.