Okay Fine Whatever: The Year I Went from Being Afraid of Everything to Only Being Afraid of Most Things Audiobook (Free)

The ‘hilarious and poignant’ story of one chronically anxious woman’s yearlong quest to seek out the adventures she’s spent her lifestyle avoiding (Cheryl Strayed).

For most of her life (as well as during her years as the host of a popular radio show), Courtenay Hameister lived in a state of near-constant dread and anxiety. She fretted about everything. Her age. Her size. Her romantic prospects. How likely it was that she would get hit by a bus along the way home.

Until a few years ago, that’s, when, about Okay Fine Whatever: THE ENTIRE YEAR I Went from Being Afraid of Everything to Only Being Afraid of all Things in her mid-forties, she made a decision to fight back against her debilitating anxieties. She’d spend a 12 months doing all the things that worried her — issues that the average person might consider carrying out to get a half second before deciding: ‘nope.’

Things like: attending a fellatio course. She did that. She also spent a day within a sensory deprivation tank, got (legitimately) saturated in the middle of a workday, got a program with a specialist cuddler, braved twenty-eight first dates, and (maybe scariest of most) actually fulfilled someone who might probably appreciate her for who she actually is.

Refreshing, relatable, and pee-your-pants funny, Fine Fine Whatever is usually Courtenay’s hold-nothing-back account of her travels on the front lines of Mere Human Girl vs. Dread, reminding us that even the tiniest amount of bravery continues to be bravery, which regardless of who you are, it’s possible to combat complacency and become daring, or at least bold-ish, a little at a time.

‘You men, this publication is f*cking funny.’ — Chelsea Handler