Instructions: read this in the voice of the always-feeling-sorry-for-themselves, insufferable main character of your favorite coming-of-age or rom-com movie. (I am feeling sorry for myself in an insufferable way right now, so might as well have my main character moment.)
It’s 11:30 p.m. on New Year’s Eve, I’m alone in bed in the dark, crying. Why? It all traces back to me being a chronic over-committer.
I’m a yes-man. I get a rush when someone invites me to do something, or asks me to do something for them, and I say yes. It’s great in the moment. I get my dopamine fix and it all sounds just peachy. Then all of the sudden I’m stuck with a month from hell. I go straight from work to check on someone’s cat for free, then straight to a dog/house sitting gig where I use every muscle in my body to prevent the dog from attacking someone on a walk around the block. Then straight to grabbing drinks with a friend, or somewhere where I get asked about my life and have to come up with something where I won’t spontaneously combust into an epic meltdown. No, I’m saving the meltdown for myself alone in my car on the ride back to where I’m dog/house sitting.
I have a side hustle working two shifts a month on the weekends, because I thought it would be a good idea to have another job on top of my full-time job. Then I have a side-side hustle because it sounded like a good idea too. I commit to all these things but truly salivate over the idea of going to work, coming home, and not have to do something. I romanticize the idea of a 7-step night time skincare routine that I spread out over the span of an hour as I daintily tidy my apartment and drink tea in a gauzy robe. Deep down, I desire routine and leisure. But boy am I bad at those things.
(As I reminder I am being extra insufferable because of the main character insufferableness I am channeling.)
Anyway, back to the clock ticking away on 2024. It’s actually a really short story: I was invited to spend NYE in the mountains with some friends, some of whom are currently visiting from out of state, and I couldn’t go because yup, I committed to dog/house sitting. I was and still am, like, really devastated. (Might I add that there is a hot tub where I would’ve been staying.)
Determined not to be sad because that’s surely a bad omen on the night of a new year, I scrambled to make some plans. This friend was out of town, this friend got sick. At the end of the night it was just me, a bottle of wine, a movie, and some takeout. Which is really not a bad way to spend an evening, but I really didn’t want to be alone like I am now, thinking about how mentally exhausted and burnt out I am and how I can’t even see a way out. How I know I accomplished and did things this year I should be proud of and satisfied with, but I feel nothing.
*cough cough* Okay, that was the cue for a really cute love interest to interrupt my depressing, self-deprecating monologue. No? Anyone?
Damn. I’ll try again next year I guess.
A Series of Awkward Events 