Cashing In on Pain

When I went online to check my blog statistics today (3018 hits!), I noticed a tab I’d not yet explored called “Monetize”. I clicked on it and discovered that I can capitalize on my broken heart by allowing ‘relevant’ businesses to advertise on my blog for which I would earn ‘big’ sums each time one of my readers clicks on the link to one of the business. I’m not actually going to do this, but I couldn’t resist trying to figure out who would want to advertise on a jilted woman’s divorce recovery blog. What products could possibly be relevant to depression, sleeplessness, sobbing, listlessness and so on? So here’s what I’ve come up with : The Top Ten Products I Would Allow to be Advertised on my Blog

Sleeping Aids
1) Ontario vintage white wines (which when consumed in sufficient quantities guarantee a full night’s sleep on the sofa, even in the absence of pillows and blankets)
2) Silicone ear plugs (for allowing you to sleep through the day after a night of insomnia due to having run out of Ontario vintage white wines)

Music and Entertainment
3) Angry love songs (I will Survive by Gloria Gaynor; Love Hurts by Nazareth etc ... so you can play them when you are tempted to call the one who dumped you and tell him you’ll change)
4) Ridiculous Slap Stick Comedies on DVD (when empty cases are visible throughout the ‘family’ room, you can claim to have been laughing so hard you were crying, if the doorbell rings unexpectedly)

Perk-me-Ups
5) Fair Trade Coffee (which allows you to feel good about your contribution to social justice even as your teeth become stained brown, your stomach lining is eroding and your cardiac rhythm is not so rhythmic anymore)
6) Reece’s Peanut Butter Cup ice cream (which – in combining the childhood comfort food benefits of both chocolate and peanut butter- can be readily rationalized as a reasonable facsimile of a hug from your mother)

Pharmaceutical Products
7) Cough Drops (which can be quickly popped into one’s mouth when sensing a sob arising from the throat. With practice, a simulated coughing spasm, complete with watery eyes, can explain away those unanticipated resurgences of emotion occurring at awkward times).
8) Allergy Pills (which when left in strategic locations are presumed to be combating the hay fever that has left your eyes all puffy, your nose red from over-blowing and the tears dripping down your cheeks.

Stationery Products
9) Journals (for documenting your daily pain ratings – on a scale from one to ten, one meaning “I can bear my agony in an upright position” and ten meaning “if I were in an art-therapy class, I’d draw a picture of myself as a corpse with a knife in my heart”)
10) Self-help books (so you can read about other people who have successfully survived divorce resulting in you feeling even more pathetic than you already do because you’re not moving as quickly through the healing process as the authors did)

If this goes over well, I can quit my job and live off the income generated by ads for Chapters/Indigo, Shoppers DrugMart, iTunes, and Blockbuster. Are you with me on this?