17 Things I'm Going To Need You To Do in 2021

Dear Jess,

It's a new year, and even though time is arbitrary and meaningless, I have some new year goals for you. In 2021, I'm going to need you to:

1. Not spend money on the complete opposite of necessities (before paying off your credit cards. Get your balance down and then you can buy an accordion).

2. Bulk your savings account back up until you at least have enough to spend on a hospital or vet bill (or maybe an accordion).

3. Resign yourself to your eating habits and stop buying groceries you're never going to eat. It's fine! Vegetables are overrated!

4. Actually, scratch that last part. Eat some vegetables. Throw in a few fruits for the hell of it.

5. Start working out again. Not because it made you look more like society's version of acceptable, but because it tired you out enough to make you fall asleep within 20 minutes of going to bed as opposed to laying awake on your phone for an hour.

6. Clean your apartment on a regular basis. Having no roommates is not an excuse to live like an animal! Eventually another human might actually visit you and it would be nice not to have to spend the whole day before deep-cleaning and wishing you were dead.

7. Speaking of animals and a clean living space, brush your cats more often so your apartment doesn't turn into one giant ball of fur.

8. Donate or sell all the clothes and shoes you haven't worn in the last two years. (Normally I'd say the past year, but as far as I'm concerned 2020 didn't happen.)

9. Purge your dishes as well. I get why you thought having enough tableware for four people was a good idea, but you have had more than two other guests at a time in your apartment literally once since spring of 2019. You are clearly incapable of owning enough dishes for a small family without using every plate, bowl, and glass until you've run out of clean ones.

10. Use up all the cross-stitching supplies you bought during lockdown and still haven't used before buying more. Admit that once you've gotten through them you will probably never make another one again. (It won't be like playing the accordion, which you will do all the time.)

11. Work on keeping alive the plants you already have rather than introducing new ones into a botanical graveyard. Make a watering chart so you land somewhere between dehydrating and drowning them.

12. Stop pretending you don't experience depression because it doesn't feel "that bad." Start seeing a therapist again to help you navigate it. At least they'll be able to help you confirm whether or not you're actually depressed, lazy, tired, or some combination thereof.

13. Similarly, stop ignoring your queerness because you feel like you're not "queer enough." You're attracted to people other than men; just because your dating history consists primarily of cis men doesn't mean you aren't queer, it just means you have bad taste. You don't hold other people to this standard so knock it off.

14. Sexuality aside, be honest about what you want in a partner: someone who is happy to see you once or twice a week, tops, and doesn't need to be in constant contact. Unrelated: Work on developing that app for people who only want long-distance relationships.

15. Stop forming one-sided attachments to strangers on Twitter on Instagram. Remind or at least convince yourself that they are probably terrible.

16. Be kinder to yourself, but like, not that much kinder because you already cut yourself a lot of slack, as evidenced by most of this list.

17. Learn the accordion.

I'd tell you to print this out and hang it up somewhere but I know you don't have a printer and it doesn't really seem worth the $3 at UPS (that accordion isn't going to buy itself), so just keep emailing it to yourself.