You do this every year. You convince yourself that you’re not a tool for the Gregorian New Year, that you’re not the basic kind of bitch who makes resolutions. You take note of the thinkpieces that are written for those who think they’re better than the basic kinds of bitches who make Gregorian New Year resolutions, and instead resolve to construct resolutions that you call by any other name. Last year you told yourself you weren’t going to “do,” you were just going to “be.” You ended up doing a bunch of things you never set out to do, and not really being the kind of person you set out to be. Okay, that’s a lie. You wrote that for the irony of that statement. You were actually pretty great. Sure, you didn’t read the books you listed as books you’d finally read, but who in their mid-30’s really has time to read A People’s History front to back? Instead, midway through the year you got obsessed with the idea that what Kanye is doing is performance art, and you listened to his entire discography front to back. You finally get Yeezus!
You also oscillated a bunch between going with the flow, and treating your life like a garden of sculpted bushes. Where each bush is, like, a routine that, if you followed religiously for the rest of your life, would make your life, like, super optimized. One of those bushes was journaling. The last post you wrote before this one was in June, so that bush is either really nappy or really dry depending on where you want to take that analogy. Remember how you spent your birthday with Lovely in the forest, spent 2 days learning about ayurveda, compiled a list of all the things you should and shouldn’t eat, and then went on to completely not incorporate that into your life whatsoever? That was right before your Kanye obsession. It was a response to the nervous breakdown you had in January leading up to Sundance. It was the moment you spent the next 6 months referring to whenever you reflected on a time in 2018 that seemed like there was less to do and more to be.
This past New Year’s Eve, you did the countdown while Deadpool 2 was on pause. There’s probably something deep to say about ringing in the new year by watching a movie sequel for the second time. You didn’t start 2019 with a bang, nor did you clumsily stumble into it. Actually, upon reading the post you wrote a year ago, you sort of started it off exactly like last time, except with less guilt for waking up late. And despite it sounding like you spent the first two paragraphs bagging on yourself, you’re actually pretty proud of who you became over the course of 2018. You took more time to breathe. You were in nature a bunch. You came across all these moments where you could’ve lost your cool, and you didn’t lose your cool. You spent less money on alcohol. You quit Facebook!!! But all of those things are still things you did. Who you became, who you will continue to be, can’t be checked off like a resolution, because to resolve is to find closure. Here you go with your thinkpiece about how your resolutions aren’t actually resolutions, because they’re openings. Look at you. So deep. SO DEEP.