New Year, Same Trash Read online

  32. Get a couple pedicures this summer.

  For an impoverished person, I have an awful lot of privileged guilt when it comes to asking someone to scrape off my calluses. So rather than burn with shame while an underpaid young woman trims my thickened toenails, I bought one of those Amope foot-file jams at Walgreens and I shave the barnacles off my own fucking feet.

  33. Find an eyebrow person.

  I’m currently sporting two angry caterpillars over my eyes, and, dude, they’re just gonna stay that way. I feel like tweezed eyebrows look good for two days before stubble starts creeping in, and I just cannot be that diligent about anything. Plucking hairs wastes a lot of valuable time that could be spent watching old seasons of Top Chef on the iPad, and I’m just not going to do it.

  34. Buy some dresses from JIBRI.

  I bought one blush-colored skirt that I haven’t even removed from the package. In six months. But at least I supported a small, black-owned business…?

  35. Find a good neutral lipstick.

  Chapstick.

  That Stupid Place I Live

  36. Keep my goddamned plants alive.

  Three out of seven are still hanging on. Win.

  37. Set up internet and cable.

  Gold medal for me because not only did I set this shit up, but it also never got disconnected due to nonpayment. Not even once. Which definitely proves the theory that my hierarchy of needs has television programs at the top and monthly gym membership floundering near the bottom.

  38. Grocery shop at least twice a month.

  Did not. But you can blame Instacart for this, because I no longer need to shop when I can just pick out the groceries I want on my computer—click, click, clickety clack—and then a bearded young man tasked with picking out my Fig Newtons and the salad mix I added to the cart to keep him from judging me brings the groceries to my door. Then he leaves, wondering why one lonely person ordered so many rolls of super-strong toilet paper.

  39. Make my lunch every day.

  How do you people who do this on the regular actually get it done? Because I can have a freezer stuffed with Amy’s meals, and I still have to stick a Post-it on the door so I don’t forget to grab one on the way out. Are you guys really making sandwiches in the morning? HOW DO YOU DO THAT?

  40. Make an inspiration board.

  This is not a real thing I am convinced I could actually do. What would even be on it? Ribs?

  41. Hire a cleaning service once a month.

  So I bought a Groupon or LivingSocial deal (is that even a real thing anymore?) for some fancy cleaning service, filled out the online questionnaire, and scheduled a visit. Then I spent half a day scrubbing my crib so I wouldn’t have to bashfully apologize for being such a hulking slob-person. Wracked with middle-class guilt I’m not sure I rightfully deserve, I kept canceling on them until the coupon expired.

  Possibly Going Outside

  42. Los Angeles.

  I went to LA in 2016, and it was amazing. I really think I could be a California person. I hate weather, I love wearing sunglasses all the time, and no one shames you for getting in your car to run an errand a block away.

  43. New York.

  No, I didn’t make it to New York. I fucking love New York, even though my version of the American dream is impossible there and their gross, floppy pizza is like eating someone’s post–plastic surgery skin.

  44. Detroit.

  I went, I ate a loose burger, I went back again. A bunch of times. I love Detroit, because it’s like Chicago but without Cubs fans and terrible traffic.

  44. Eat arroz con gandules in Puerto Rico.

  What is this, a dream?

  45. Drink buckets of rum punch in Jamaica.

  Seriously, did I actually think I might get to do this? Who else was going to answer all the public’s questions about kidney diets for dogs? I’ve been to the Caribbean a couple times, and my longest-lasting memories are of mosquito bites and slipping on the bathroom tile and hitting my head on the toilet at the resort. Also, there were stray cats just wandering around the airport in Antigua, which easily might have been my favorite part. But I can just put on some soca music and pet my cats at home.

  46. Go whale-watching on Bainbridge Island.

  NO TRAVEL SECTION IF I DO THIS STUPID LIST AGAIN NEXT YEAR. It’s making me feel like a dumb asshole, and also I just hate leaving the house, so can we not?

  “Emotional Well-being”

  47. Learn to meditate without falling asleep.

  Tried twice, fell asleep twice.

  48. Try to think positively.

  Can’t. Everything is garbage.

  49. Stop talking (so much) shit.

  See above.

  50. Write more letters.

  One of my favorite procrastination pastimes is buying adorable handmade cards on Etsy. Like a seven year old, I absolutely love getting (non-bill) mail. I love it so much that I’m totally going to go broke, since the only motivation I have to get up and go downstairs some days is knowing that there will be a package waiting for me. I didn’t have a car in Chicago, because I lived in the kind of neighborhood that made having a car absolutely not worth it. I know what you’re picturing: crime-ridden inner-city street crawling with nefarious desperados just itching to break the window of a 2007 Kia Sportage to steal the thirteen dollars’ worth of Burger King coupons in the glove box. Really I lived on one of those bustling, apartments-outnumber-the-houses streets, and if I had a fucking car, I would’ve had to circle my block for twenty minutes banging my head on the steering wheel while sobbing incoherently before finally giving up and parking six blocks away. In the snow. At night. With groceries. So fuck all that, I split a cab to get to work and ordered everything I possibly could off the internet. And now that I live in a place surrounded by actual farms (on the way to the reindeer farm to pick out a Christmas tree last week we ACTUALLY HAD TO PAUSE FOR CHICKENS CROSSING THE ROAD—why is this my life now), there’s no place good to buy the stuff I like, so the FedEx guy and his towering stack of boxes with my name misspelled on them is my only source of actual joy. Ill-fitting, awkwardly-sized clothing with a zero-tolerance return policy, hair products that smell like wet garbage and don’t quite work for my particular curl pattern: it’s Christmas in July every time the UPS truck rumbles up to the curb out front. I assume other people also enjoy the feeling of finding something other than a red-light-camera ticket or overdue gas bill in their mailboxes, so I buy tons of cards online and randomly mail them to people whose addresses happen to be in my phone. 2016 was a good year for these Batman Forever stamps I didn’t anticipate being embarrassed to use.

  51. Be honest about shit that is overwhelming to me.

  GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM ME. I’M STRESSED, HOE.

  52. Get better at accepting edits and criticism, but only when it comes to my work.

  “Keep in mind that I’m an artist, and I’m sensitive about my shit.” Badu (and me, duh).

  53. Stop reading trash.

  BUT I CAN’T. And I don’t just mean book trash, because I refuse to give up gripping courtroom dramas no matter how predictable. I need online celebrity gossip to live. I like looking at pictures of actresses’ shoes and reading the speculation on who Drake is going to date next. I like reading about the exotic locales they charter private jets to and seeing the contents of their handbags, even though I can’t even begin to imagine why one person might have use for three different cell phones. A forty-seven-carat engagement ring? Yes, I’d like to see the blurry enlarged paparazzi photo of that! Snippets from the out-of-context transcripts of saucy voice mails left for their ex-lovers? Send me the goddamn link! I’m not even snarky about it—I want to see Tom Cruise’s living room just because it’s Tom Cruise’s living room! Maybe the calm winds of 2017 will blow in the kind of Zen that makes Rihanna’s outfits boring to me, but I doubt it.

  54. Be a little bit nicer to myself.

  Getting better, day by day. Still cropping the droopy left side of my face out
of my selfies, though.

  Responsible Adult Activities

  55. Get an accountant.

  FOR WHAT MONEY?

  56. Give more money to charity.

  I don’t know if this counts, but I gave a lot of money to people’s GoFundMe campaigns this year.

  57. Establish some credit.

  Yo, I really did this! In less than one year I went from being a person with a credit file so thin I might not actually be a sentient human being to a person who leveraged one secured credit card into several real credit cards with laughably small limits! I can finally move on to the next level of adulthood: overestimating my ability to pay a car note and having it repossessed while I’m sleeping!

  58. Put the cat on a diet, for real this time.

  Helen Keller, that mean asshole, lost three real pounds last year, which is like fifty in human pounds. And then she lost all her pounds, because I had to put her down. This year I’m going to resolve not to get my heart broken by any animals.

  59. Buy absorbent towels.

  I am grappling with a lot of “Oh shit, I’m not cool anymore” feelings as I creep ever closer to forty, and nothing makes me feel less rad than the fact that I wrote this sentence down, in earnest, last December.

  60. Get up and go to the farmer’s market every Sunday.

  There was one half a block from my old apartment, yet my desire to lie in bed looking at your ex-girlfriend’s cousin-in-law’s Instagram posts from 157 weeks ago was still greater than my desire to put on a shirt, find one of the dozens of reusable grocery bags my guilt forced me to purchase (THEY ARE LIKE SOCKS, WHERE THE FUCK DO THESE HOES DISAPPEAR TO), and drag myself outside for some inexpensive, locally grown apples.

  61. Figure out how to file my old taxes.

  Wait, how long did it take for Wesley Snipes to get caught!?

  General Life Horseshit

  62. Get to work on time every day.

  I did not do this.

  63. Go to bed early, do my night rituals.

  I wish “night rituals” was some interesting, witch-coven-type shit, but really it boils down to “floss my teeth” and “spend thirty seconds rubbing in night cream,” and as easy as those sound I still never regularly accomplished them.

  64. Make, and stick to, a budget.

  MO’ (FREE) MONEY, MO’ PROBLEMS. I for sure lied to myself that if I ever got a credit card I would be totally responsible and only use it for emergencies. In 2016 those emergencies included, but were certainly not limited to

  • an Uber to Union Station because I hate taking the brown line;

  • a bag of limes and a bottle of tequila because I had a bad day;

  • headphones to replace a pair the cat chewed up;

  • the cable bill because, DUH, Game of Thrones;

  • an emergency burrito.

  65. Put back the money I “borrowed” from my IRA.

  Um, maybe when I get my tax return this year? Fuck, I forgot I even took money out of that shit.

  66. Get my tarot read.

  I’ve done it before, and the woman was so frighteningly accurate that I basically flipped the table and threw fifty dollars at her before having a complete sobbing emotional breakdown on the corner of Division and Ashland. I want to do that again!

  67. Get an accurate bra measurement.

  So I’ma give myself half a point on this one, because I did get measured, but I’m not sure the measurement was accurate. I mean, the woman made 137 attempts, each one feeling less accurate than the last. Then I had a “holy hell, I just took up so much of your valuable salesperson time and now you have to spend your afternoon fitting all these straps back into those complicated-looking bra hangers, and wow, oh wow, is it humiliating to be old enough for a prescription for Lasix yet have no idea what size bra you actually wear” panic attack and ended up buying many bras in many sizes. Pretty sure not a single one of them is actually correct, but I am going to wear them anyway.

  68. Respond to all my emails.

  Every time I respond to them all, ten more show up to take their place. It’s like having roaches. Roaches that just want to confirm for the fifth time that I didn’t forget about our dinner reservation next week. (Roaches that know I’m just going to cancel, yet insist we play this irritating game.)

  69. Call people I haven’t spoken to in a while.

  But why, when I could just text them? The telephone is a trap from which one can never politely extricate oneself without a phantom package delivery or imaginary house fire. It’s not good manners to blurt “Look, man, I’m done talking” without the person on the other end either continuing to chatter on uninterrupted, thrilled to have someone to throw words at, or threatening to never speak to you again and slamming the phone down in your ear. Which would be fine, because then you’d be relieved of the chore of having to talk to them on the phone.

  70. Learn to love chia seeds, as apparently they are good for me.

  LOL BYE.

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