Rights sold to Japan, Vietnam, Indonesia!

Sometimes we feel like grabbing someone by the collar. After enduring and enduring until we finally snap, we want to hurl a stream of curses and get into a fistfight. But, thanks to our reason kicking in, we usually end up screaming internally or punching the air instead. However, that "someone" is sometimes another person, but often ends up being ourselves. Especially in those moments when you can't tell if you're going crazy because of someone else or because of your own self. The moment we acknowledge each other's 'craziness', a slight possibility for understanding emerges. So, how about we try saying this: "We all go a little mad now and then."

Author Jung Jieum, who swiftly gained ardent fan support in the essay genre with her first book, The Sorrow of Young ADHD, has released her second new work. The Sorrow of Young ADHD deeply resonated with readers by acknowledging that we all have our 'non-normal' aspects, while also wittily revealing the room for laughing through the despair, earning the love of many readers. In this second book, We All Go a Little Mad Now and Then, she focuses more on "relationships," honestly and humorously unraveling the emotions in our connections that can be loving one moment and frustrating the next—emotions that can drive us crazy.

"That's why you are you, and I am me—what else can we be?"

The author describes her company life, full of situations she can't control, and her strategy of enduring by being like a "Giving Tree." One day, she found herself even cleaning up after others' delivered meals. She finally snapped and slammed the trash bag onto the conference room floor. When people rushed over, not to help but to make a fuss, she just made a scene herself, saying, "I'm so, so sorry, it was an accident??"

"I smiled so widely my molars showed, trying to look innocent, but somehow, rumors started circulating the next day that I had a terrible temper. But I didn't care. Actually, I felt relieved." (From 'The Giving Tree (Despair Edition)')

She also shares thoughts on why her relationships always seem to turn out a certain way, using the example of an ex who acted as if he were Zeus, not a boyfriend, spouting nonsense like, "You're too much," and "For every one word I say, you say ten, a hundred words back. Can't you just be more compliant?" In such moments, the author confesses she sometimes tried mimicking the professional demeanor of a flight attendant.

"Just like explaining emergency exits, I informed him that we have a method for breaking up, and that it was, in fact, the wisest course of action. He would then froth at the mouth like a crab smashed by a wave at high tide. While imagining that sticking a toothbrush in that mouth would make it look like he was brushing his teeth, I made the appropriate decision for the moment—either a perfunctory reconciliation or an actual breakup." (From 'Mutual Fault')

In Order to Become More Flexible with Each Other

We know, deep down, that it's impossible to fully understand each other's hearts. So why do we constantly struggle because others—or ourselves—don't match our expectations? The author reflects as follows:

"Only those who allow for their own madness can be somewhat more flexible in the face of others' craziness. Because they can understand that, just as they themselves are mad, the other person is also mad, and they can wait for that person to run out of mad energy and return to their senses. (...) So now, I collect comments calling me crazy like gold stars. I tell myself that a life less understood is a more enjoyable one, while blurting out that this enjoyment might just be another name for weariness." (From 'The Wicked Happiness of a Strange Person')

And haven't we all experienced times of tormenting ourselves with the "failure of hasty over-involvement" in relationships? We judge and decide quickly, thinking it's cool, but in reality, we can't endure without excluding others who seem impossible to deal with. The author shares her experience of striving for the opposite goal: the "success of leisurely neglect."

"Thinking leisurely didn't mean I could embrace everyone as part of my destiny. However, to the extent I invested patience, I could accept the end of a relationship more comfortably when it came. (...) Later, some relationships I had definitively marked as 'ended' renewed themselves. People I had needed to let go of, not hold onto, came to mind one after another. Then, I wanted to send long greetings to all the people swimming in my head."

The Joys Found in the Gaps Between You and Me

Beyond this, the author fills the pages with the varying textures of emotions in relationships: the changing distances between us, the questions we need to ask each other, the space between solidarity and disgust, and the moments where drawing a hand's breadth closer was enough. Through this book, readers will look inward at their own "loved disappointments" and resonate with the "sound of worlds colliding" that the author describes, recognizing they too have heard such sounds. And ultimately, they might just discover those small, joyful moments felt in the space between "the distant me and the neighboring you."

Jung Jieum

Born in Gyeonggi Province in 1992, she won the grand prize in the 8th Brunch Book Publishing Project, which led to the publication of her first book, "The Sorrow of Young ADHD". She had thought she had already said enough about ADHD, but upon revisiting her childhood and adolescence, she found there were still untold 'stories' waiting resentfully to be shared. She hopes that those who feel disliked for no reason, those consistently at the bottom of the class, those cheated in absurd ways, those who see only a bleak future, those who have lost something precious, and those who keep failing can lean on her stories and find even a little reason to smile.

She is also the author of the sitcom-style novel "Unlucky Startup", the essay collection on relational difficulties "We All Go a Little Mad Now and Then", and "A Splendid Spectrum of Failures", which documents the vibrant hues of various failures.

Preface

Chapter 1: The Disappointments I've Loved
The Wicked Happiness of a Strange Person
I Am the Center
After Tearing Down the Relationship Boundaries
Mutual Fault
The Failure of Hasty Over-involvement
The Giving Tree (Despair Edition)
The Kid Who Spilled the Frappuccino
Love, Either Too Scarce or Too Much for Me
The End of My Life Reform Plan
I'm My Fan
Rainy Day

Chapter 2: The Sound of Worlds Colliding
Farewell to Swear Words
Let's Write a Diary
The Courage Not to Hate
What Were Your Parents Like?
Between the Louvre and a Humble Abode
The Death I Met at the Police Station
Aspiring Beggars, the Unemployed, and the Divorced & Single
The Correlation Between Drinking and Love
Humans Are Formless
On Melancholy
The Freedom to Clean a Neighbor

Chapter 3: The Distant Me and the Neighboring You
The Joy of a Petit Twitter User
Daily Life of a Normless Anarchist
Three Friends from the Slum Company
It's Impossible for Anyone to Hate You
My ADHD Friends
Currently "Going Hard"
To Youngjoo
A Botched Karaoke Night
Thirty Fantasy

The Romance of Our Time

A Spring Day's Cat and the First Snow