It’s the final day of 2018. It’s snowing outside. I’ve got a cake in the oven and the house smells nice. While waiting for the cake to bake, I’ve been scrolling through end-of-year posts on Twitter and Instagram. People are posting lists—lists of books they’ve read this year, lists of things they’ve accomplished, lists of things they are looking forward to in 2019.
Lists about things you’ve done and things you intend to do are great, but I think lists of things you haven’t done and will likely never do are every bit as illuminating. So here’s a list of things I haven’t done and have no intention of doing in 2019.
- Watch any of the following movies: Titanic, Love Actually, or any of the dozens of Star Wars sequels, prequels, or spinoffs. If I could go back in time and unwatch the original Star Wars, I would do so. (A movie about a woman who travels back in time to unwatch a movie sounds like something George Lucas might make.)
- Wear a “statement” sleeve. Apparently this is a thing. Sleeves with holes in them, sleeves with bows and ruffles, enormous sleeves that hang all the way to your knees, balloon-like sleeves that make you look like trussed mutton. This is a trend I’ll be skipping, so don’t give me the side-eye when you see me wearing that same sad, gray cardigan again. I don’t have a lot of options.
- SoulCycle or CrossFit or any other exercise program that seems more like a cult than a gym. I actually do not begrudge anyone who swears by these routines. I have no doubt they work, but I am turned off by the wide-eyed evangelizing that seems to accompany such brand name workouts. I did Bikram Yoga for a brief period of time in the early 2000s and I still feel kind of icky about it. I’ll stick with my generic workouts and I’ll spare you the details.
- Go Paleo or Atkins or Keto. I like bread. A lot.
- Stop eating cake. Because cake is basically bread with sugar.
- Lose 20 pounds. (See #4 and #5)
- Watch football. I have watched football in the past, because I’m from the South and football is always ON. Even in Denver I can’t always avoid or escape the nonstop televised games, but I don’t enjoy watching football. I don’t care about the game and now that I know how dangerous it is, I like it even less. I don’t want to watch a bunch of grown men suffering repeated traumatic brain injuries for the sake of big money. That’s not entertainment, that’s barbarism.
- Use social media notifications. Years ago I turned off most of the notifications from my social media feeds. I don’t get pinged when someone posts something on Twitter or Facebook or Instagram, even if it’s about me. I get occasional (daily or less) email notifications in a secondary email account that I check rarely. I log on to these social media services when I want to and I read what I have the time or interest to read. No more. It’s fine. I don’t have the capacity for constant connectedness. I don’t need to know everything.
- Get one of those digital home assistants like Alexa or Siri or whatever. (Why are these things always personified as women? Must women do all the administrative support work even in a digital world?) I don’t need some robot listening to my every utterance and sending me advertisements based on a passing whim. It’s bad enough that my computer shows me nonstop ads for bedazzled tunics based, I’m assuming, on my online shopping history. (Note: I have never shopped for a bedazzled tunic of any kind.)
- Stop ranting about our current president and his corrupt family/friends/employees/cohorts. I don’t think this needs any explanation.
Happy New Year, everyone. I hope you accomplish everything you set out to accomplish in 2019. At the very least, I hope you manage to keep right on not doing all the things you don’t want to do. That’s my goal. I feel pretty confident about reaching it.
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