New Year, Same Trash: Resolutions I Absolutely Did Not Keep (A Vintage Short Original)

by Samantha Irby

Whole Foods is one of those miracle places that makes you feel as if you are making good choices when instead you are spending half your rent money on organic kohlrabi.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.