My Year of Rest and Regression.
OUT: slaying IN: decaying
Have you been subjected to countless meticulously curated year-end recaps since last week? Has an influencer invited you to be “gentle” with yourself? Did you expect a timely and introspective email from me on January 1st? If so, you are a victim of the Gregorian Calendar and may be entitled to compensation!!
Maybe it’s a good time to remind everyone that nothing is real, including time and medical debt. Allegedly, we are made of the same elements as erupting volcanoes and The Simple Life Season 1 DVD are made out of. We are witnessing people starve in real time on the same platforms and devices that we use to look up the best winter soup recipes. This year there is a very real scenario in which a dictatorship could be re-installed. I am relying on a clairvoyant in a bad wig for reassurance that the outcome is otherwise. And I am supposed to focus on Dry January?? I couldn’t even publish this email on time. Goodbye.
As a girl armed with a future-famous Substack account and zero celestial sensibilities (except to ask you what your sign is so I can make sure you are not a Scorpio), We do not need another recap, a gym membership, or a month without alcohol. (Queue someone in the background screaming, “Y’all need Jesus!”)
I think what we (you) need is for someone very wise and gorgeous (me) to show us another way (my way).
This year, I plan on staying the same or getting insurmountably worse.
Stay with me here.
Look, I will be more responsible if it serves me and donate to the right causes, but I reserve the right to continue to be a big dumb idiot with my own money. I will freely spend money on tchotchkes and whatever SSENSE sale is happening and then ignore my PG&E bill until I get a second or third reminder. I am unsure about, or refuse to Google, who gave them the right to own electricity anyway.
This is the year of high expectations + low output. I want a promotion and a raise this year and if I don’t get one I think I might just have to pop off!!
Pop off = complain and finally learn Excel.
I will stay in my lane, but keep the window rolled down so that I can passively receive chisme and other miscellaneous/scandalous tidings. I will go off-roading, however, for relationship infractions or hateration in this dancerie.
I will try new things that scare me: flaking last minute, botox lip-flip, being perceived (carrying over from 2023) but not being the center of attention (this is new), EMDR therapy, menudo.
I will post unhelpful infographics and cringe content.
Lastly, I am delighted to report that I finally found a new therapist but, likely, I will mostly focus on whether or not I am their funniest/most relatable client instead of the C-PTSD diagnosis that got me there in the first place.
My point is - doing one’s best right now or even doing anything remotely good at all is worthwhile and heroic. Our simple animal brains are processing the dire results of capitalism and colonialism. We are watching innocent children die by the hundreds in a moment while figuring out what’s for dinner the next. At our jobs, we go back and forth from making ourselves big enough to be taken seriously or small enough to go under the radar - depending on the meeting. Bread is $350 and they gave Chapelle ANOTHER special.
You’re good. You don’t need to stretch more or start journaling if you are busy demanding a ceasefire whilst getting ready for tax season which is funding the very thing you are asking to stop.
I looked up the card that Little Miss Tarot pulled and I learned that the Five of Cups represents redirection in a time of loss, finding one’s way through it. I find it interesting that this is the card that chose to go viral, regardless if it was pulled for a potato with eyes.
As we cling to the last vestiges of our sanity and hope this year I wish us all the serenity to accept the things we cannot change about ourselves, the courage to not change the things we should, and the wisdom to ignore the difference. You are a perfect little freaky just the way you are and I am happy to hang on and/or backslide with you.
