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

by Samantha Irby

As soon as I come up with a list of major flaws and bad habits I’d like to change, my brain sees that as a challenge and wants to do all those things even harder.

I printed it out in secret over the course of a week in the upstairs office at the bakery where I used to work and moved that five-hundred-page manuscript from shitty apartment to shitty apartment until it was finally destroyed in a flood that also killed the MacBook hard drive I had it saved on. This is how tenuous being a writer was before Google docs; a dude with a backed-up kitchen sink in the apartment above yours could destroy your dreams in an afternoon!

Start a journal. I guess I have one? But I’m too lazy to write in it. Sometimes I try to keep a food journal in an attempt to shame myself into making better choices, but then I get all embarrassed and write shit like “six baby carrots” when I really mean “one medium-sized pizza.” And that is counterproductive. Because it was a large.

I bought some concert tickets this year, most of them purchased with a real intention of going. The thing that sucks about shows is that, yeah, when the tickets went on sale in October you totally wanted to see Bilal on February 26 at 9:30 p.m. It totally sounded like a possible thing. But then February 26 rolls around, and you had a shit day at work and you puked down your shirt while running to get the express train and you got home only to discover one of the pipes in your kitchen burst and you have a blister on your foot and you just got a GrubHub coupon in your e-mail and the thought of going back out when the wind chill is -2 is daunting and who cares that the tickets were only seventy-five dollars apiece? He probably wasn’t going to perform “Soul Sista” anyway. You’re staying home.

Go to the dance hall at least once a month. I love reggae music and letting dudes in linen pants push up on me at the bar, but if we’re being 100 percent honest with each other, I really can’t commit to anything once a month. I don’t even get my period once a goddamned month.

Take some cooking classes. Did not do this. I did make jam, though. Like, from scratch. I peeled a bushel of peaches and mixed powdered pectin with sugar and sterilized a bunch of mason jars and even tied ribbons around some of the lids. I was feeling pretty twee and smug about the whole thing, but then who the fuck can eat thirty-seven jars of peach fucking jam? Send me your a...

This will go down as the year I started making vegan overnight oats: 1 banana, smashed ½ cup rolled oats ¼ teaspoon cinnamon ¾ cup almond milk Mix that all together and pour into a mason jar—so people at work will know how healthy and Pinteresting you are—then stick it in the fridge overnight. Sneak bites while hovered over your desk the next day, spooning globs of extra-crunchy peanut butter on top to mask the feeling of wet boogers on your tongue. Fart all morning. Take a massive shit by 3:00 p.m. Repeat.

20. Drink tons more water. I DON’T HAVE TIME TO PEE THIS MUCH.

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.

I used to only go there because they have the most flame bulk gummy candies, but then sometimes I’ll be wandering through the aisles looking at shit I have no idea how to fucking cook and think to myself, “Why, yes, I could use some powdered spirulina!” NO, I CAN’T. And then it just sits on my overcrowded refrigerator shelf, between the gallon of aloe juice and the bee pollen granules, mocking me as it rapidly spoils, and I lack any motivation to find a real use for it.

Visit a botanic garden. Is this the same as Olive Garden? Because I did go to Olive Garden last year. Kind of a lot.

25. Learn some shit about wine. I started drinking rosé last year because my friend Melissa does and she is very glamorous and sophisticated. I still don’t know anything about wine, because I don’t really like the way wine tastes. I don’t know why admitting that feels so shameful and juvenile to me, but it does. I don’t like coffee either, unless you understand coffee to mean “milk shake reminiscent of coffee.” And what’s the point of that when you could just get something that’s actually delicious and doesn’t taste like burning?

I went to a fancy restaurant on election night to avoid overdosing on projected results and ordered a nice-sounding red from the menu and practically burst into tears when I tasted it. The server was going on and on about pairings and I was...

See more smart movies in the theater. I saw The Secret Life of Pets, and, since I hate loud noises and I don’t speak tween, it was the hardest I’ve worked to understand something all year. Kids were cracking up all around me and I was shout-whispering, “WHAT HE SAY?” and “WHO IS THAT?” the entire time. I’m pretty sure it was about a cat.