Now that's what I call... 2021
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Hello. The cool thing about this particular content distribution mechanism is that I am the boss of what I say and when I say it. I don’t know if I’m ever going to give you more things about songs, but I encourage you to keep jamming to that playlist.
Here are some things I did and enjoyed in 2021 that I would like to recommend to you.
1. Muting everyone’s Instagram story
I follow 1,633 Instagram accounts as of this writing (and that’s after a purge last week, before which I was at around two thousand). And I have spent the back half of this year methodically and deliberately muting all of the “stories” these accounts post. If I follow you on Instagram, I have not seen the ephemeral images of your dinner or your booster shot or your Trail of Lights experiences recently, and I’m fine with that. I wasn’t there. I hope you had a great time, but I don’t need to know about it.
The cruel, shitty part of all of this is that I haven’t stopped posting stories. I can’t help myself. It does feel uneven and unkind, but other people’s consumption of stupid internet content is not my responsibility to manage or make decisions about. I do know that being in that dumb app for literal hours a day was making me feel empty and sad in a way I couldn’t quite pinpoint until I realized… that I was spending literal hours a day in it. And I don’t think my life is going to be richer because I saw some brand’s shitty pun about a holiday.
I have spent a lot of my adult life dealing with Content FOMO. I have needed to be the person who saw the tweet first, who was the most tuned in to the viralest of videos, who read all of the thinkpieces and had a thinkpiece of my own ready about the thinkpiece. It was exhausting, obnoxious and a stupid piece of “personal branding” that, at 40, I am happy to abandon. LOOKING AT THE INTERNET EVEN A LITTLE BIT LESS: I recommend it.
2. Fake grass
We live in a medium-sized house on a half of a lot in a hot ZIP code. Our backyard is relatively small, but we wanted to make it nice. And after several failed attempts at sod (grass repeatedly failed to thrive under the shade of the two massive pecan trees that also live back there), we decided to splurge on the fake stuff this past spring. DO THIS. DO IT NOW. It is not the Astroturf you are envisioning. It is a plush, cartoonishly green carpet that the dog loves, that dries so fast after it rains and that generates zero mud. I frequently sit on the ground and walk around barefoot in my own yard. It looks and feels perfect and it makes me feel like I live at a hotel. I would spend money on this again and again and again, and I think it’s the best thing we purchased all year. Special thanks to Southern Turf Co. for being our landscapers of choice.
3. Only making shit when you feel like it
In March of 2020 I frantically sent out a daily “newsletter” of little content recommendations while we were all just quarantining “for two weeks.” Remember how much we all longed for distractions and games and projects back then? I had fun doing that, and then it felt like a chore, and so I stopped doing it.
You also know that I pledged to write a WEEKLY letter to you about a song from my past, and couldn’t even get that off the ground until six months after I made that public promise. I also helped to do a podcast. All of these things were really fun to work on when I wanted to work on them, but once they started feeling like obligations, I started actively resenting them. I’m not getting paid to do this shit, and I already spend a lot of my time doing things I do not want to be doing. And I don’t want to get into the business of only making things because the calendar is telling me to and not because I really enjoy making them. So cheers to inconsistency; I have become fine with my own, obviously, and recommend that you do, too.
4. Brewdog
I have really really high liquid needs, and that liquid is very rarely actual water. I can easily put down a dozen (or more) Bublys a day. I make myself sick on coffee at least four times a week. And I frequently lap dinner companions re: wine. I just want to always be having a little party in my mouth, but sometimes don’t need my liver to also be celebrating.
Enter Brewdog, the purveyor of the non-alcoholic IPA that became a delicious weeknight treat for me in 2021. I don’t know why I continue to find it so horrifying that I can slam four fake beers in a sitting but have yet to be shocked by doing the same with real ones, but I’m happy to say that Brewdog makes me do less of that. If they could just work on renaming themselves so I wouldn’t have to talk about something called “Brewdog,” that’d be great.
5. Not apologizing for not being online
I don’t know anyone whose relationship to Work hasn’t changed over the last two years. The topic of how and why and where we do our jobs is endlessly fascinating to me, even though I hate all of it and am forever bemused by people using terms like “work family.” (I’ve also come hard around the bend on that particular issue by realizing that it is not my responsibility or purpose to arbitrate other people’s sources of personal connection and joy, so if you want to talk about your [INSERT BRAND HERE] family and mean it, then I do not want to slag on that experience.)
My primary motivator is and always has been guilt. And the way that manifests itself is usually to just trip over my own colon falling out of my body while I try to make sure others are either a) having a nice time or b) thinking I am helpful/cool/hilarious. In recent years, part of that has meant that I will appear to be CONSCIENTIOUSLY and DILIGENTLY WORKING, even if I am, in fact, getting a haircut or picking up dog poop or sleeping until 9:30. I have been regularly known to respond to an email while I am behind the wheel, actively engage on Slack outside of normal working hours and offer a cheery “no problem!” to a last-minute Zoom invite when I am, in fact, mouthbreathing on my couch in front of a King of Queens rerun and it is actually very MUCH a problem. I know many of you feel and do the same.
This is not cool, it is not virtuous, it is not interesting, it is not sustainable. I have made it a habit this year to block hours of my calendar on, say, a Tuesday afternoon, so I can just walk downstairs to talk to my spouse or go outside to get the mail or leave the house to pick up my goddamned groceries. We all work hard, and we work a lot - and even if we don’t, we are selling our time to organizations who do not and will not love us back. I don’t work in an urgent industry, and I am over being anxious that my Slack bubble isn’t green for “visibility.” I’ll respond to you when I respond to you.
6. Toast as a meal
When I moved to Austin in May of 2017, I was unemployed, locally friendless and newly cohabitating with my partner. All that is to say that I had a lot of time on my hands. One of the things I tasked myself with “learning” during that period was how to poach an egg without using any dumb assistive kitchen tools. I did learn how to do it, after a lot of trial and error, and it was a colossal waste of time.
This fall, very late to the quarantine hobby trend, aforementioned partner decided to get into the sourdough baking game, which of course meant that I got into the sourdough eating game. I like a PB&J as much as the next lady, but my tastes are decidedly savory-leaning. And so toast became my twice-a-day go-to meal - usually with a poached egg on it.
Several years ago my mom and I were invited to a wedding in San Francisco. The morning of the big event, we walked to the Ferry Building, had a delightful brunch and then went to Sur La Table - a store I had never been inside before, despite them not being that hard to come by (see above; I do not cook). At that point in my life I had already gotten way the F over trying to pour the correct amount of vinegar into my swirling, boiling water to make a restaurant-level poached egg; at that store I found two little silicone egg poachers that have proven themselves to be true workhorses in my kitchen in the year of our lord 2021.
Toast as a meal: I mash up some avocado, always, but after that it’s just throwing whatever is in the fridge onto a piece of crunchy bread. I have never been a natural in the kitchen, but these toasts feel as close to jazz as I can muster. Leftover salmon, wilted arugula, questionably fresh tomatoes, definitely past-their-prime scallions, weird cheeses, ill-advised lemon wedges - if there’s a piece of toast and some avo mash on the bottom and a poached egg with hot sauce on top, you’ve got a stew going.
7. Taking ridiculously long walks while listening to audiobooks
I hate exercising and I hate living in Texas. But the great news about residency in a state that loathes women (and Black people, and brown people, and poor people, and small people) is that the weather is pretty temperate 12 months a year, and what I *do* love is getting my fucking steps in. This summer I decided that, to get out of the house and shirk my responsibilities inside of it, I’d start taking walks. When I’m at the top of my game I do about 50 miles a week. Not Sedaris levels, but it feels so good to move, to breathe, to be outside and in the world in a way that doesn’t make me feel nervous about being out or bad about my body or competitive or inadequate or scared.
One of the perks/rewards of these excursions is that I listen to books to keep myself outside and engaged. And, let me tell you: Walks are a wonderful way to allow yourself “beach reads” all year. (Maybe people who have been kinder to their bodies and relished the benefits of mild exercise already knew this, but WOW is it news to me.) I highly recommend getting a library card and the Libby app, because one audiobook on Audible is like $30, and I don’t need anything else eating into my Brewdog budget.
8. Relaxed-fit pants
Maybe I was activated by the Lost J. Crew Instagram account (whose stories I have muted, obviously) but I have rediscovered, and re-fallen in love with, huge, mid-90s-vibe prepster clothing.
Listen: I have always gone hard for a large garment. My loved ones know to gift me only things with at least two X’s in front of the L, as far as size is concerned. I bought a bathrobe this year that could comfortably fit my entire family. And WE ARE BACK, BABY. This year, when I was stupid and shortsighted enough to think that I’d ever go back to an “office” and wear “clothes” that weren’t “sweatpants,” I went all in on huge chinos and corduroys, and obsecenely large chambray shirts. After a solid decade of skinny jeans, I feel like I’ve come home.
We all know my feelings about a gaucho, but that’s kind of a novelty goof pant that I only wear, at this point, to make my friends mad. I am wearing these wide-legged gals daily and feeling so great about my 1994 androgynous vibe. Bonus points if you pair them with a Chelsea boot and a Katie Kimmel shrimp sock.
9. Debrox
I got an ear infection before Thanksgiving, and I wholly attribute that to wearing earbuds for a minimum of 20 hours every day (see: audiobooks; see also: being unable to fall asleep without listening to episodes of 30 Rock). I was, thankfully, able to procure a prescription for antibiotics from a telemedicine doctor supplied by my corporate insurance (I couldn’t go see an actual practitioner because at the time I was home alone with a dog who ended up having what we believe was an intestinal parasite and she was shitting her guts out every 90 minutes for a week and a half; managing chronic canine diarrhea makes my list of “don’ts” for 2021).
I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but a month later I am still dealing with a lot of earwax issues. If you like examining gross things that come out of your body WITHIN REASON as much as I do, I highly recommend these earwax treatment drops. You know how people talk about “productive” coughs? It’s like that, but for your ears. And it makes a cool little crackly noise when you pour it in.
10. Turning 40
I was so scared and sad and mad and nervous about this birthday I had in January. As a friend of mine said, it was so much bigger and more annoying dealing with the leadup to the whole affair than the day itself ever ended up being.
Jeff gave me a wonderful day: We went to an outdoor brewery, the dog met some goats (her first of several that quarter), we had a decadent catered omakase at home and a huge chunk of beloved friends and family joined me for a surprise Zoom right after I woke up from a nap. I don’t know what else I would have wanted or needed.
My gift to myself when I turned 30 was Botox, which I got religiously every six months for the following eight years. My unintended, unexpected present to myself at 40 has just been to appreciate and love becoming older, to feel more calm and confident and careful than I ever have in my life. I have the luxury of options in a way I haven’t before, and I want to exercise that privilege conscientiously: I want to do less, and do the things I do choose to do more presently and deliberately and lovingly.
So, I’m sorry I don’t follow your Instagram story. But I sure will love the heck out of your posts, and of you.
Have a happy, healthy new year, my friends. For as dumb and shitty as all of *this* can be, we are so, so, so lucky to be here, together.