Why It’s Time To Break Up With 2020 & Make Room For 2021
Tags: 2021, Covid 19, New Year Resolution, 2020, Humor

Why It’s Time To Break Up With 2020 & Make Room For 2021

This year has been, um, catastrophically AWFUL, and that’s putting it lightly. Thankfully, the curtain is beginning to fall on this Covid-induced fever dream, courtesy of a handy new vaccine á la someone much more science-y than I. And as my needle phobia draws near, so does a new era:

2021: A post-Covid utopia

Spoiler alert: It’s a lot of what you enjoyed pre-Covid, but now you’ll actually appreciate it.

Let’s dive in.

1. The revival of happy hour

Don’t ask me what it is about clutching a glass of red with one hand and tooth-picking a deep fried ricotta ball with the other while watching the sunset from a rooftop in Soho (bliss, probably). But it just hits different than sipping corner-bodega off-brand “merlot” in my PJs as I stream reruns of Real Housewives in bed. The CDC forgot to mention these side effects on their website.

2. Not fear spiraling every time someone sneezes

Is it allergies, or is it the Rona? One can never be too certain.

3. Never “launching” Zoom again

While being able to kill a jumbo-sized bag of Skinny-Pop in the middle of a zoom meeting with the camera off is what Big Sean meant when he sang “blessings on blessings on blessings,” it’ll still never outweigh the nuisance of the mute button. Why is it only ever on when I mean it to be off and vice versa?

Looking forward to the days when the only thing I have to mute is my high school friend’s Instagram when they’re recruiting new members for yet another diet pill pyramid scheme.

4. Watching football in a stadium

It’s been ages since I downed a $12 bud light in a foam koozie and pretended to care.

5. Abandoning well-intentioned but very overambitious goals

Three weeks into quarantine, I decided it would be cute if my French boyfriend and I could communicate in his native tongue, so I downloaded an app that promised to make learning a new language “fun.” (eye roll)

Two weeks later, he told me croissant is the same in both languages, and it was “au revoir” to that short-lived endeavor.

6. Not feeling a strange sense of pride for baking a loaf of bread from scratch

It was a dark time, guys. No judgment here.

7. The luxury of seeing someone’s lips move while they talk

Can you even imagine? Chatting with a person, and like… watching their mouth form words instead of engaging in a relentless stare down with the mask they haven’t washed since March?

8. Restored confidence in the global stock of toilet paper

I don’t know what it is about irrational human behavior in relation to hoarding bathroom products during stressful times, but things got very “Man vs. Wild” for a solid minute there.

9. Getting to dress up for literally anything

What is it like to have a reason to straighten your hair and put on skinny jeans? Asking for a friend.

10. Deleting 209,083 home fitness apps

I started out my quarantine with the workout enthusiasm of Khloe Kardashian post-divorce, and now I have a punch card at Shake Shack. Sprinting on a treadmill just isn’t the same without a hot Barry’s instructor screaming behind me like a drill sergeant to “run faster!”

11. No longer being around roommates 24/7, every-effing-day

If I have to spend another year talking over my roommate’s obnoxious conference calls, I swear to God I will fake my own death to get out of this lease.

12. The return of moisture to the skin on our palms

Why did the prevention for this horrible sickness need to include dousing ourselves in the gel form of rubbing alcohol twenty times a day? I want answers.

An aside: my boyfriend gave me homemade sanitizer when Covid initially hit NYC, and I swooned as if he had personally concocted me a custom perfume. 2020 got bizarre fast.

13. Resuming postponed TV Shows

Succession, do you miss me too?

14. Being able to look your non-American friends in the eyes again

Can I just apologize on behalf of everyone in the U.S. for how we handled this pandemic?

@anti-maskers (in Regina George voice): You’re like, really, stupid.

15. The end of the ever-looming temptation to snack

There’s constantly trail mix in my mouth, and I never know how it got there.

2020, it’s not me. It’s you.

And while it’s been fun, (sort of), I think it’s time we see other people.

Sayonara!