New Year’s Evolutions
You're a brand new species!
NYC based Yesterday’s Horoscope readers: I’ll be reading a recent horoscope at Book Club Bar for their 2/21 Wordsmith Literary Salon and I’d love to see you there!
JANUARY
New Year's resolutions are complex mazes of disappointment. Actually, the maze itself isn’t that sophisticated—it’s essentially a straight path with a few sparse hedges that leads directly towards catastrophe. Your approach is what makes your resolutions so labyrinthine, Virgo.
As you lay amidst the rubble of your poor decisions, it’s understandable to question and curse the choices that brought you to that moment. What sliding doors ass series of events caused you to once more be surrounded by the singed debris of your efforts? Though it’s often useful to retrace the steps one takes and interrogate the patterns one makes, feel free to save yourself some time here by just assuming that the reason you make any decision is because of self loathing, Virgo (aside from the good decisions, but who’s interrogating those?).
There are symptoms of self-loathing that feel bad, but render favorable results. I’m not saying that self-loathing is a good thing, just that sometimes it can create an accidentally positive outcome. For instance, your self-loathing motivates you to stick to your skin care regime, since otherwise you believe every blemish is your fault, and you can’t have that kind of blood on your hands. Sure, it’s all motivated by self-hate, but since the outcome gives you a slightly less greasy mug, I guess it’s worth it.
On the flip side, there are other self-loathing symptoms that inspire fleeting pleasure, but render calamitous results. For example, believing your baselessly optimistic New Year’s resolutions are reasonable, then hating yourself (more) when you fail to mutate into the impossible, fictional you. This flavor of self-loathing is a siren song that never ceases to call you away from shore.
The allure of a Herculean to-do list eclipses your ability to wonder, Is it physically possible to accomplish everything I’ve written on this to-do list? Self-loathing doesn’t tell you how to change your life for the better, it just demands that you change ASAP—seriously, everyone is better-read and has more money saved for retirement than you do. I am merely imitating the mean voice in your head, and although there is some hyperbole at play here, it’s also true that if someone has more than one dime (USD) saved for their retirement, they have saved more than you.
This year is off to a herky-jerky start Virgo, because at first you actually do succeed at achieving many elements of your New Year’s resolutions. The only problem? Being the robot woman you decided in late December you were destined to be leaves you despondent and without inspiration. Where do we go from here, self-loathing?
I hate to tell you this, Virgo, but self-loathing is a wily and untrustworthy compass. It cannot consider holistic wellness, humanely scheduled calendars, or the amount of sunlight a human being should absorb (often, Virgo forgets to leave the house for three days straight. Often!!!).
So, what do you have in mind for these New Year’s resolutions? There are a few old standards of course, like drinking more water, standing more frequently during the workday, and spending less money on things you’ll immediately regret. But you also have other, slippier goals, like becoming Someone Who Goes To The Theatre. Since you live in Brooklyn, you’re well situated to pursue this metamorphosis, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to be an easy ride.
Your first effort in this endeavor is also your first mistake: you look to just one person for theatre recommendations. It’s great to zero in on a critic or fan whose opinions you connect with, but it’s important you cross-pollinate their opinions with other opinions, so you aren’t just blindly following the commands of someone whose feelings about all content are unlikely to be identical to your own. This blind faith is what leads you to buy last minute, embarrassingly expensive tickets to a play that shall remain technically anonymous, but whose description may accidentally reveal its identity (shouldn’t have made such an easy to describe play!).
The title of the play is a palindrome—you know, a word that’s the same backwards and forwards; like racecar. Only this palindrome is a full sentence! You’ll think to yourself, Huh, a sentence palindrome, you don’t see that everyday!
Little do you know that this cheap gimmick foreshadows the complete misery you pay a small fortune to endure. You see, Virgo, the play itself is a palindrome. So when you see 45 minutes of the most appalling display of hubris you’ve ever seen, buckle up because you actually have to watch the exact same 45 minutes worth of pomposity over again—only this time? It’s backwards!!! Get it?!?
Actually, the second half of the play is technically the half that’s forwards. For the first half of the play the characters speak backwards, a la the Black Lodge in Twin Peaks. Though this trick certainly took the world by storm in 1990, 33 years later this device is a little less compelling. During the first half of the play you comfort yourself with the thought that though you loathe the play, it’ll surely be impressive to see the actors retrace their steps in the second half. Only they don’t even commit that!! A projector comes down and they screen a pre-recorded version!!! Which goes on for 45 minutes!!!! I cannot tell you how offensively self-satisfied this play is!!!!!
Since you’ve been responsible for what have certainly been the worst shows other people have ever seen in their lives (one improv show where you played like, a really mean dog comes to mind), it takes a lot for you to completely write off art as masturbatory pointlessness. Glass houses, throwing stones, etc. But this play is excruciating for every single second, and the cast’s hard-ons for their own genius make it all the more repugnant.
Your experience at this grift play sets up a pattern that’s followed by many of your other resolutions. When you adhere to one resolution, you betray another. Sure, you dip a toe into live theatre, but in doing so you flirt with bankruptcy for a 90 minute middle finger. You succeed at decreasing the amount of restaurant food you eat, but unfortunately this robs you of all joy/delight. You exercise enough to lead the revolution, but it’s eating into the time you normally use to connect with your interests/opinions/humanity. What good is a round lil ass if it’s attached to a sorrowful body?
Self-loathing cannot help you achieve balance, Virgo. When you’re designing the you of your dreams (can break a watermelon open with her strong strong thighs, sleeps on a pile of gold bars saved for retirement, can do a “siren eye”), it’s important to be honest about all your goals, not just your superficial ones (I’m not talking about the watermelon thing—that one’s noble).
As much as your list-making, rule-following, goal-setting brain wishes there were, there’s no perfect formula for How To Be. Not achieving personal perfection every January may feel like a magnificent personal failing, but it’s very human to fall short of your goals. No one is who their perverse, end-of-December self thought they’d be. I’m not saying give up, but I’m saying it’s okay to let joy guide your resolutions, instead of hot hot hate. They’re resolutions Virgo, not evolutions.