Ah, the inevitable passage of time

For Auld Lang Syne

I’m sitting on my bed while my roommates make corn tortillas from scratch in the kitchen. I’m grateful to live with people who will get dinner started while I sit in my room to crank out my last newsletter of the year. We are the perfect outline for a sitcom. 3 twenty-somethings, an artist, a journalist, and an accounting clerk, all navigating life love and scrambled eggs in north Brooklyn. Don’t compare us to Girls, Lena Dunham has never imagined 3 women who get along.

I actually just wrote the first draft of a sitcom pilot for an online class. I think it’s bad but maybe I’ll edit it one day into something better. I’m not going to tell you more about it. This post isn’t about me, it’s about us. Society! And how we always move through the passage of time together. My junior year English teacher told us to never use “society” because it’s too general. I like it because I think it embodies the vastness of everything. Okay on second thought, I understand what he meant.

If your email inbox looks anything like mine, you’re probably sick of hearing about New Years. About resolutions and changes and end-of-year flash sales, and about leaving the wretched 2020 in the past. I won’t be the first to say a lot of bad things happened in 2020. But they also happened in 2019 and they’ll also happen in 2021. Scientists predict “bad things” will continue to happen until the year 2049. At that point we’ll be wiped out by global drought so we won’t really have time to sit and ponder the goodness and badness of things. I’m not trying to be too cynical. It’s just that I saw a rat fight another rat in the street and it had me thinking about the meaning of life. 

New Years has never made a lot of sense to me. Most of my life my new years have started in September with school, or in May on my birthday. A new year started for me this August when I got a new job. New years can begin when I find out I’m signed up for another year of my paid subscription to my period tracking app. (With the paid version it tells me what foods I should eat during my luteal phase and I love ignoring the advice every time to eat frozen dumplings at 1am.)

What I’m saying is that I don’t expect to feel any different when the clock strikes midnight tonight. I’m not Cinderella and I’ve been going to bed around 2am for the past 5 years, so 12am has never really been significant for me. I’d like to think about the things I’m bringing with me into 2021, and not the things I’m leaving behind. 

In 2021 I will continue to write this newsletter. It’s going to get better and worse and maybe one day I’ll add pictures. I’m also going to continue to call my best friends and ask them if they think I’m funny. Depending on their responses, I’ll decide which of them to keep with me in 2022. 

In 2021 I’m going to keep ordering the pad thai with vegetables from Sage, and the falafel sandwich from Sakib. I’m going to look at both of the menus for these establishments for 5-7 minutes each time before inevitably deciding to get the same exact thing. In the new year I will keep striving for consistency in my diet, in my attitude, and in my sense of humor. No poop jokes unless they really need to come out.

In 2021 I will keep checking the weather app to see how hard it’s raining instead of going outside or god forbid looking out a window to check. I will text my roommate who was up earlier than me how the weather is before even doing any of those aforementioned things. In 2021 I will be just as lazy as I am now.

In 2021 I will still go back and watch the season 2 finale of The Office when I’m in a weird mood. It’s the one where Jim tells Pam he loves her in the parking lot and she’s wearing a really ugly blue dress. I remember watching this episode before I had ever kissed a boy, and before I had even gone on a date. I like to watch this because it reminds me why I want to make a TV show someday. I want to write an episode that someone revisits, for whatever reason. I want to make shows that people rewind.

I’m grateful to have 127 of you signed up to either read or ignore what I send every week. To be clear- I have no hard feelings for those who don’t read. I get emails all the time. I usually only read the ones from my boss or my mother. Actually I just decided if you read my newsletter every week you’re probably a narc or my boss or my mom. Or you’re in love with me but that only applies to one of you. But thank you. There’s a lot I have to work on, a lot I have to improve upon, and a lot of ways I can better show up for the people in my life. I’m working on that now and I’ll continue after midnight tonight. I don’t need a calendar date to tell me to be a better person, that’s what I have anxiety for. 

Thank you for reading this to the end, and have a Happy New Year. If that’s your thing.