Throughout the course of my life, many an authority figure has promulgated to me the usage of "I" statements, in order to help myself and my peers regulate our emotions and express them with as much cogency as possible. Resultant of the usage of these "I" statements would ostensibly be minimal confusion when interacting in our personal, scholastic, and professional lives, as well as the inception of a new method of stress release. However despite these wonderful promises, I must say that up to this point, my usage of these statements has been relatively exiguous due to my concluding that they (while seemingly imitating a useful emotional tool) were in fact nothing more than meretricious. And it's entirely plausible that, in being blinded by the philosophical pitfalls that often befall youth, I did not end up giving "I" statements a fair shake. So in the interest of being a more dispassionate individual and dialing back the cynicism, I have decided to give it another go.

The preliminary course of action in this case should probably be a simple delineation of "I" statements, so without further ado, here it is:

An "I" statement should be constructed like this:

I feel __________ (put a name on the emotion and claim it)

when __________ (formulate a nonjudgmental description of the behavior)

because __________ (describe the tangible effects of the behavior).

Seems simple enough, right? Even someone with an 11th grade education such as myself should be able to figure it out. It should also be mentioned that often times as well, many will advocate making an additional statement describing what it is that the person making the statement wants to be done to help meet the need expressed by the statement itself, however that shall be saved for another day when my "I" statement abilities have been sufficiently developed. So anywho, how about we give it a go:

I feel tremendous melancholy when I read an article saying the Nuggets' ceiling is 25 wins because my need to observe competency in pundits is not being met.

I feel furious when I see Rudy Gay, DeMarre Carroll, The Greek Freak, Andrew Wiggins, Chandler Parsons, Tobias Harris, Kobe, Luol Deng, and Kyle Korver as being rated better players than Gallo because my blood boils when I read ignorant horseshit.

I feel ecstatic when I wear hats because fuck you I don't need to give a reason.

Wow. I feel much better. So maybe "I" statements work after all. Or maybe I just needed to think about hats for a while.