Samantha Irby
New Year, Same Trash
Samantha Irby writes a blog called bitches gotta eat.
ALSO BY SAMANTHA IRBY
Meaty
New Year, Same Trash
Resolutions I Absolutely Did Not Keep
Samantha Irby
A Vintage Short
Vintage Books
A Division of Penguin Random House LLC
New York
Copyright © 2017 by Samantha Irby
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, and distributed in Canada by Random House of Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited, Toronto.
Vintage and colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
The Cataloging-in-Publication Data for New Year, Same Trash is available from the Library of Congress.
Vintage Books eShort ISBN 9780525435150
Ebook ISBN 9780525435150
Series cover design by Joan Wong
www.vintagebooks.com
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Contents
Cover
About the Author
Also by Samantha Irby
Title Page
Copyright
New Year, Same Trash
I’ve never had a problem with the word “resolution,” because I’ve never really believed I might actually keep one. 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.
But last year I got talked into joining this woo-woo group of people who want to be better this year than they were the last. The idea is that you make a list of a hundred little micro-resolutions—or “intentions” if the word “resolution” stresses you out—and you divide them into categories to make them easier to organize in your tiny brain. When I first made my list (I could come up with only seventy, and even coming up with those nearly broke me), it was filled with dumb shit like “breathe through my nose when other people are watching me” and “don’t leave the mayonnaise-covered in-case-I-want-another-sandwich knife balanced on the edge of the sink, just wash it and use it again later, you dummy.” But then I saw that other women in the group had vowed to volunteer more time to charitable organizations or study Pilates in Rome, and the boiling shame that flowed through my veins made me rewrite my own goals and strongly consider actually sticking with them. I mean, I didn’t stick with them? But I considered it.
The following is a guided tour through my year of failures.
Writing
1. Write for at least an hour a day.
LOL, YEAH, RIGHT. Writing is supposed to be my job right now, and even as I type this I’m wondering if there’s a dish that needs to be washed. Or a load of laundry I can fold. What about that one recipe in that magazine that I can’t remember if I’ve recycled or not? Shouldn’t I go make it? Is that a burglar I hear? Do the cats need their claws trimmed? I should go dust the blinds!
2. Post a new bitches gotta eat entry two to three times a month.
Jesus, my poor stupid blog. Here’s the thing: sometimes interesting stuff happens to me, and sometimes it just doesn’t. Not every day can be like the one when I saw an actively bleeding gentleman eating a used maxi pad out of the garbage can down the street from my old apartment in Chicago and he paused this activity to call me ugly. Those stories practically write themselves.
3. Update my Tumblr more often.
Deleted said Tumblr due to a crushing feeling of lameness and inadequacy (see also: being almost too old to really be cool). Deleted the app from my phone to make room for an episode of Vanderpump Rules. Basically, I’m a monster.
4. Rewrite the outline for this YA novel I want to write.
I didn’t do this, but I’m gonna. Maybe.
5. Take a fiction class.
Did you know I wrote a different novel? And I really loved it, too, except I was scared to show it to anyone because it was, of course, a thinly veiled romantic fantasy loosely based on myself and this handsome, wealthy dude I dreamed up when I was nineteen. I was more protective of that fictional romance than I have ever been of anything, and the thought of someone saying, “This alternate universe you’ve created is stupid” was terrifying. Still, 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!
Making up stories has always been more difficult than just embellishing the shit out of my own, so I just let that fantasy go. But one of these days I’m going to work up enough courage to pay someone to teach me how to properly construct a narrative. Then brace yourselves for a lot of short stories about a scrappy heroine named Amanda who bangs a lot of implausibly attractive people.
6. 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.
Events and Happenings
7. Go to roller derby.
I was supposed to go a couple nights ago, but then it started snowing and I took my bra off and there was a new episode of Shark Tank on and you know how shit goes. Plus, watching sports without an announcer or a commercial break where one can switch over to the Law & Order marathon for a few minutes is boring.
8. Hear more live music.
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.
9. 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.
10. 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 address so I can mail you some. I ate one fucking piece of toast and was like, “OVER THIS.” Help me.
11. Go to First Friday at the Museum of Contemporary Art.
I did try a couple times, but I’m pretty sure I’ve aged out of the demographic. The Museum of Contemporary Art is definitely where you’re going to find your manic pixie dream girl, gazing thoughtfully at an installation while sipping an overpriced wine and nodding her artfully styled head appreciatively to whatever obscure
dance record is bumping through the speakers overhead. Unless you’re looking for your sad gay aunt, whose elastic-waist pants are pulled up to her actual bra, leaning against a sculpture because standing for more than half an hour is murder on her sad gay knees, then I am most certainly not who you are there looking to meet.
12. Suffer through the Pitchfork Music Festival.
LOL NEVER DOING THIS WHAT WAS I EVEN THINKING ABOUT.
13. Hang out with my friends more often.
I used to live a twenty-minute cab ride away from most of my friends, and even then I for real only knew what most of them were doing from Instagram. I would always feel kind of guilty about it, but none of those assholes ever wanted to see me in the flesh anyway, and now that I’ve moved to Michigan we all can breathe a little easier and stop feeling bad for making plans we never intended to keep. I love them and everything, but can’t you just post a picture of what you’d wear if we actually did meet up to chill, so I can keep these pajamas on and continue mainlining these old episodes of 30 Rock?!
14. Support the art of people I love.
Thankfully a lot of my artist friends made Kickstarters and sold things I could buy over the internet without ever having to interact with another human being, so this was easy for me.
15. Make good on all those tentative brunch plans.
But I don’t like getting out of bed. Or going anywhere. Or watching people I would rather occasionally interact with on Twitter eat soft eggs. Brunch is like having a wedding for your breakfast, and if you’re foolish enough to agree to a meal with my stupid friends, better bring your roomiest Amex, because these dudes are always like, “Let’s get a bunch of things and share!” WHAT. I AM NOT GOING TO EAT THOSE MINI LOBSTERS OR WHATEVER THAT SHIT IS. LET ME JUST ORDER THESE CHEAP-ASS GRITS. But they order them anyway, despite my vocal protests, and then I’m the shitbird who is mentally tabulating my one waffle and half-carafe of juice while they’re trying to equally divide six bottles of champagne between all the cards we tossed in the center of the table. I didn’t have any of these motherfucking Bloody Marys, and Geno is the only one who ate the steak, but there goes the honorary mathematician of the group, writing “72.5 on the green card” on the back of the check while my insides boil in agony. So that’s probably why I didn’t text you guys back about meeting up at m. henry.
I Am Just an Old Garbage Bag Full of Blood
16. Go swimming three or four times a week.
Swimming is hard. And it’s not really the swimming part; it’s the carrying-a-bag-full-of-wet-towels-and-a-slimy-suit-home-on-the-bus-in-the-dead-of-winter part that’s hard. I maybe went three times. All year.
17. Eat more healthy breakfasts.
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.
18. Take a shower every day.
When I first wrote this, the idea was that taking a shower every day would be a good way to feel like a productive, fresh start to the new day’s dawn was possible. But, as many anxious depressives know, some mornings just stepping from the bath mat into the tub is the most taxing thing anyone could ever expect you to do. So I changed this to “take a pill every day,” and so far that is going smashingly.
19. Try that coconut-oil-swishing thing that everyone on the internet was into for a hot second.
I tried it, once, and it was like trying to gargle with a mouthful of butter. And this is probably betraying my ancestors in some way, this slandering of the holy grail that is coconut oil, but I already rub it on my scalp and my elbows and sometimes fry chicken in it, so I think I should get a pass.
20. Drink tons more water.
I DON’T HAVE TIME TO PEE THIS MUCH.
21. Wear clean socks every day.
Nooooooooope. Nope, nope, nopety nope. I did not manage to do this.
22. Choke down the expensive-ass probiotics just sitting in my fridge.
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 most certainly am not immune to the lure of the Potentially Beneficial Luxury Grocery Item. 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.
Cultural Kinds of Things
23. Start a book club.
I started a drunk YA book club on the internet. The basic premise is that I suggest a young adult book every month, and either you read it or you don’t. No awkward discussions over a grocery-store cheese plate in someone’s real apartment, just sassing on Facebook about books we’re too goddamn old for. But then I moved and started a real book club to try to trick some of the women in this new town into liking me, and I picked a polarizing book about abortion that most of the people disliked! This was a very smart plan! I spent the next three nights eating handfuls of the leftover cheese while dreading ever making another selection! Can’t wait to do it again next month!!!
24. 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 just like, “Do you have a pile of garbage I can eat with this?” So crossing wine knowledge off my list forever.
26. Listen to more good music.
AMAZING AT THIS, ACTUALLY. I made a King Krule station on Pandora, and it is the best.
27. Get magazine subscriptions and stop wasting money at the newsstand.
I spent approximately $4,923 this year on magazine subscriptions.
28. Catch up on This American Life.
I downloaded the app. Does that count? Sitting still and actually listening to things is harder than I thought.
29. 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.
30. Go to Grown Folks Stories every month.
Storytelling is a big thing in Chicago. We have poets and tons of comedians, but there’s also a huge assortment of people in the city who get up on stages in bars and the back of bookstores and tell compelling, sometimes funny, sometimes heartbreaking stories from their lives. Anyway, my friend Cara hosts the best story night in town, Grown Folks Stories, and that shit is basically my 1997 dreams actualized: dudes in
headwraps wearing chunky silver rings, with their top five shirt buttons undone, sing-speaking about the superficially deep concerns of our third eyes and mortal souls. I always feel like an asshole when I go, because my stories are all about shit and piss and licking butts, but I really do like being trapped in close quarters with a hundred people who smell like incense wearing ankhs. But it goes down at eight on Thursday nights, and I usually reserve that time for looking at pictures of nachos on the internet while eating steamed broccoli and trying to come up with reasons not to step off the curb in front of a bus, so I don’t make it that often.
Glamour
31. Wear blush every single day.
This I actually managed to do, but most days I didn’t remember to put it on until three or four in the afternoon. So I’d spend three-quarters of the workday looking busted, and then two hours before it was time to go home be like, “Hi! I have pink cheeks now!” Stupid.
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