I have lumbered where you have lumbered, writhed where you have writhed. I was once, too, of bloated corpulence.

Mnahn’, I get it.

You have all these plans to get your dripping dominion back on track, but then you succumb to all the usual quotidian distractions like rekindling your relationship with the local priest or inaugurating a new subterranean cult, and, ’ bthnk, you’re back to square fhtagn!

Let me tell you, the only Neolithic swamp-creature you’re hurting is you.

Right?

Whether priest or gastropod, ask yourself: Have your violent occultists, like, actually appreciated your denizen of hell? Is your robed colony of worshippers feeding you?

See, I get a lot of octopoda saying they’ve got all these febrile minds coming to them, minds that are happy to suck upon their innumerable knowledge-teats, they’re all excited about it, really pumped up—and then those same minds reach the precipice of my clients’ gaping beaks only to turn back in anguish.

It’s easy to think that it’s because of you.

Like, at some point, they spotted your true form and didn’t like the webbed dread staring back.

Listen, if these disillusionists fail to understand you at your least loathsome, they certainly don’t deserve you at your most abject.

Does that make sense?

Here’s a simple trick I learned to snap into shape—soul to cytoelastic sacculus—and got myself back to terrorizing misguided language professors into worshipping me again.

It’s super simple: just stand up.

Yep, just stand—it’s okay! Pretend the gibbering priesthood isn’t watching. That’s the first step.

You good? All right. Now, I want you to breathe in. Really fill those gills.

Repeat after me: You’re going to procure yourself a quotable fridge magnet, preferably one that bears some repulsive, devil-tablet inscription like, I’M NOT PERFECT BUT I’M PRETTY DARN CLOSE! and a statue of a carven idol, and a bas-relief. Then you’re going to submerge them and include the following affirmation in your daily oral ritual: You have the power to incite dread. You can devote the arcane vistas of your mind to the task.

Does that make sense?

I’m not going to pretend you won’t raise a few eyebrows, maybe even make a few enemies, on your journey to life coaching. You guys probably know about the time I caused a big brouhaha on Oprah with my “swamp wade,” where I whipped hundreds of Portuguese seamen into a frenzy and then had them swarm across my preprepared sludgy brine. Sure, a few people got hurt. Sure, some were never found again. But those who got hurt recovered from their nightmares eventually, didn’t they? And honestly, I hear the ones who went missing were kind of n’gha about my wade, so who cares.

You got a fridge magnet already? Let’s see what it says—BE STRONGER THAN YOUR STRONGEST EXCUSE. And there’s an image of a 1950s housewife showing off her biceps. It’s repellent and perfect.

Promise me you’ll remember that bas-relief too, though?

All right?

Y’hah, let’s do this!

Personally, everything I’m telling you now, I wish I knew centuries ago when I was a young squink. My previous existence really was so similar to life coaching; it’s like I never left my slime pool. Life coaching, too, is based on pulling meaning from nothing, mixing metaphors into pits of gunge, plundering brainyquote.com for ravening zingers, patching together dictums voided of their content to make uninscribable life-coach flotsam. The very language of life coaching is evasive and vague. Right? So, the idea is that your followers will literally follow you without really “following” you.

Right?

I mean, that makes sense, right?