Tyler Hobbs, Fidenza

My New Year’s resolutions:

  1. Write every day.
  2. Volunteer every week.
  3. Get therapy.
  4. Stay single.
  5. Write an essay in Chinese.
  6. Listen to fewer words, more music, and more silence.

Progress:

  1. Not perfect, but good.
  2. Started very good, currently very bad.
  3. I start today and I’m really excited about it.
  4. So far so good.
  5. No.
  6. Yes.

My New York resolutions:

  1. Join a writing group.
  2. Go to an exhibition every week.
  3. Take long walks – first avenue by avenue, then street by street – call friends along the way and start every conversation with “hope your family’s been well”.
  4. Build a speakeasy on the rooftop with furniture rescued from the sidewalks of Hell’s Kitchen (tables and chairs on Tuesdays). Name drink specials for each roommate, especially the cat. Unsubtly reference it in conversations with attractive strangers, ie. “I know a place but it’s pretty low key.”
  5. Spiral into a crisis after taking a pill someone gives me at a party because at first it feels fucking awesome why don’t I have fun like this more often maybe because the real me is too intense too weird too defective to let out in front of people or maybe because there’s always an equal and opposite crash but the crash is definitely worse if I think about it or maybe none of that is true but I’ve just believed it for so long that I’ve forgotten how to relax I’m spiraling I’m spiraling calm DOWN after I have what mistakenly feels like the deepest conversation I’ve had in my entire life up to that point with a girl with kind eyes, spend the following days asking my friends how to ask her out respectfully, have her decline even more respectfully.
  6. Get blindingly drunk, slowly, alone, in public.
  7. Design a time machine and bring it to the middle of the desert in September.
  8. Develop a shaky understanding of The Power Broker through Wikipedia synopses, Goodreads quotes, and one of those book summary startups I hate. Unsubtly reference it in conversations with attractive strangers, ie. “Wow, Robert Moses really fucked us with that highway”
  9. Read tarot cards for a stranger in a park, as far away as possible from one of Robert Moses’s highways.
  10. Cook dinner for new friends in a kitchen where only one of the stovetop, oven, or microwave can be on at a time, spend too much money on spices I’ll never use up in my time here, realize too late into the evening that we don’t have any serving vessels, giggle until conversation becomes impossible as we gather at the table around rice in wine glasses and water bottles, braised pork belly in a salad bowl, and pickled cucumbers in a coffee pot.
  11. Keep asking if Broadway is open yet, pretend to care about the answer.
  12. Declare that hot girl summer never ended in New York, stop reading the news, stop watching the case counts. Push my hair back out of my eyes and say to everyone who will listen, “the goal is no thoughts, head empty”. Who cares what the ownership structure of Chinese technology companies says about the Party’s international intentions or how the size of aerosol particles affects infection severity or whether Jay Powell gets reappointed to the Fed? Nerds, that’s who.
  13. Wander all five boroughs without a map.
  14. Learn how to say “boroughs”.
  15. Think about how I’ve been in love with The Idea Of This City since I was fifteen years old and spent two hours awestruck at a Hot Topic in an outlet mall.
  16. Fall asleep on the leaves in Central Park.
  17. Fall asleep on a bench in the subway after too many consecutive nights out, wake up disoriented and leave the station without boarding any trains.
  18. Helicopter to the Hamptons.
  19. Make plans to finally post on Instagram with the perfect caption — minimalist, witty, just the right amount of DGAF energy. Never post because the photos I take of myself with a timer never look quite the way I imagine before my battery runs out or before I become tired of looking at myself with a critical eye over and over and over again, again.
  20. Piece together an evening through forensic analysis of my camera roll, notes app, call history, and credit card statement. Try not to think too much about the six outgoing calls to a number I don’t recognize.
  21. Notice that someone I was in love with years ago is here, wonder if my use of past tense is genuine. Send them a message on Instagram asking them to meet. Consider using this space to tell you that if I sent you a message on Instagram asking to meet, you don’t have to worry about it. Decide against doing that. You should worry about it.
  22. Overcome the compulsion I’ve developed over ten years in the United States to performatively distinguish myself from people who look like me. Ease into the belief that actually, normie things can be good. Learn to like boba, 50% sweet and 25% ice.
  23. Croissants at Arsicault, bike ride through the Presidio, cocktails at Smuggler’s Cove.
  24. Go out and let my hair down, metaphorically and literally, celebrate not just one pandemic’s worth of missed birthdays but every missed birthday I was too afraid to ask for attention for since I was twenty four, realize that I’ve been holding my breath for seven years and now that I’ve let it go my brain can finally get enough oxygen to remember what it feels like to like myself.
  25. Master of None season one.
  26. Tap two girls on the shoulder at a concert, all wide smiles and dilated eyes, and say, “Hi. Just let me know if I’m standing too close or bumping into you too much.”
  27. Acquire the Sally Rooney bucket hat at all costs.
  28. Walk along the Hudson holding hands in fall coats.
  29. No choreography classes.
  30. Start waking up at 6am after discovering that mornings on the East Coast before the West Coast wakes up feel like the first time I’ve had a break in years.
  31. Remember to move back to the Bay.