How to Be a "Functional Human Being" in Society

1. Preheat to 350°F.
It never asked for this.
It never asked to be made.
Fortunately,
Its feelings on the subject don’t matter.
It’s going to exist, 
Whether it wants to or not.

2. Start with a base of flour, sugar, butter, and basic personality traits.
This step is very important, as it lays the foundation for the rise of the crust:
Whether you want it to be introverted or extroverted, organized or lazy.
Some of these are clearly better than others, but you know,
We can’t all be perfect.  

 3. Add creativity and individuality.
It doesn’t really matter how much you add,
Or even what kind— 
All of the flavour gets lost in the baking process, anyway.
These ingredients are really only needed for the first few years.
During this time, they’re praised for expressing it,
But wait a bit longer, and you’ll be desperately trying to pass it off as
“eccentric,”
Insisting to others that they’ll “grow out of it soon.”

 4. Fold in the emotions.
For this step, make sure your hands are steady.
You can’t mess it up when you carefully fold them in.
(You can’t mess this up.)
Take a deep breath and—
You’ve made a mistake.
Now the whole cake is ruined.
If it’s too emotional, how will it get anything done? 
It will always be too worried about itself to even try to
function like everyone else.
And it will be way too salty.

5. Dump the over-emotional cake in the garbage and repeat steps 1-4.

6. Add traditions and expectations.
This is considered an optional step by some,
But if it constantly feels as though it’s letting you down,
These ingredients remove some of the additional sweetness that you may 
have accidentally added, which can really take it up an extra level.

7. Mix it all together.
This is your last chance to make sure you don’t have anything… undesirable 
in there.
(Oh, you’ve added too much enthusiasm for an incredibly niche interest that 
will make everyone roll their eyes and privately ask it to shut up?)
(Get rid of it.)

8. Bake until “done.”
Now, this may be the most important step,
This is where the majority of the development happens.
If you’re too rough with the cake at this stage, it will turn out misshapen 
and broken.
(And nobody wants to be served a broken cake, do they?)
On the other hand,
If you’re not aggressive with it, it will be soft and weak.
Boring, 
Just the same as all the other cakes out there.

Of course, you don’t want it to be too unique.
Don’t worry! I’m sure you’ll figure it out by the third or fourth 
attempt.
(Though by then, you’ll have already wasted so much time
trying to make it perfect.)

9. Decorate the cake.
This is all that everyone else sees, so make sure it’s done to perfection,
Cover up all the cracks and flaws and the parts you want to hide 
away.
Even one small defect at this stage could ruin the whole thing,
So make sure that it’s exactly to everyone else’s liking.

 10. Enjoy!

Because there’s no reason for anyone not to.

(Right?)