Thank goodness 2020, the worst year of your privileged and extremely self-involved life, has finally come to an end. Suck it, 2020! It’s time to move on to something better without sparing a second thought on whether the year-long string of catastrophes was a culminating consequence of selfishness, individualism, and late-stage capitalism or just some random fluke of bad luck.
Now that it’s finally over and 2021 is here, it’s time to get back to continuing to focus on you. Here are just a few ideas to ring in the new year with a new you without having to do any of the work of actually becoming a better person.
1. Work out more and get in shape! This one is a classic New Year’s resolution for a reason. Not only is it completely superficial but even just having this goal will make you feel better about who you already are without adding any value to yourself as a human being. Sure, you could work to embrace body positivity and the fact that health is not an indication of worth, but it’s so much easier to feel better about yourself by making everyone else feel a little bit worse.
2. Take a vacation. I mean, sure, in 2020 you did actually take a trip to Disneyland, and went to Florida for spring break, and rented a lake house with your whole family during the height of the pandemic when health professionals were literally begging people to stay home. But it didn’t really feel like a vacation because instead of people congratulating you on what a great time you were having during a year of record housing and food insecurity, it was more like, “What the fuck, Bethany?? How could you??” So in 2021, try taking a vacation exactly like the last vacation you took but this time you can post pictures without people harassing you.
3. Try a new trend, or start your own! Is this going to be the year you wear scarves? Sequins? Blazers? A completely retro throwback wardrobe? Might as well try everything and see what sticks because this faltering economy will come to a grinding halt unless you consume, consume, consume. And you can take that as a personal mandate because you’ve learned nothing about the harm of keeping an exploitative economy on indefinite life-support.
4. Make some new friends. It’s been a long year of not socializing with anyone except for all of the other people willing to defy stay-at-home advisories and social distancing guidance to go to bars and grind against strangers. Try meeting some new friends to go with the new person you are in 2021 – the exact same person you were at the beginning of last year but now with a fun hat.
