Everything You Need to Leave Behind in 2020

As we gather here today, let’s hold our holiday-season beverage of choice high into the living room air and say: What the fucking hell was that? 2020 – what the fucking hell was that about? 

If we want to make next year the best year ever, then we must take action and follow this official list (complete with justifications) of things that need to be left behind in 2020, so life can move forward.

I know the retort: “But I think my jeans are really comfortable” no you don’t. You’ve just been conditioned to think that. Listen. There are perhaps half a dozen instances in which jeans look good. One of these is Kurt Cobain at the Roxy Theatre, the rest are in the film Thelma & Louise. Your default “jeans today look” is likely not one of them. You look like a stock photo, but worse, because you’re wearing jeans. Plus, denim feels worse than anything else. Do you do hard work and labour while wearing them jeans? Are you a ranch-hand? No?

If there’s one thing we learned this year, soft trousers that don’t pinch your balls and floaty skirts that make you feel free are good. Jeans, the (ugly) corset of the 21st century, are not. 

POLITICAL POLLS   

Put it this way. If I said hey mate, I’m likely to punch you in the face tomorrow and there’s nothing you can do about it, why would that be good, useful or valuable? If you’re going to be punched in the face, wouldn’t you prefer a nice day of not worrying and then have it happen all of a sudden, out of nowhere? Political polls just prolong misery. They’re a CNN election broadcast featuring your inner monologue of turmoil, or Twitter’s, which is just as bad. They are exhaustion without excitement. We are all better off without them.    

COMPULSORY OFFICES  

I bet you a fiver that the modern renaissance will be born in the hour spent not commuting to that strip lighting hellhole you call “the productivity hut”. Whether that’s at home in the kitchen-office, or on the public transport that is now spacious enough to allow you oxygen for thinking. 

Expand your horizons, baby. If you love banana bread, that is sound by me, but do you really love it this much? Also, without exception, it is a shit looking “bread”. It looks the same as every other banana bread. If you want foodstuffs in your treat, there are many foods that aren’t a banana. If you absolutely shag banana bread, would it hurt to stick some berries, dates, chocolate, seeds, nuts, in there? Make 2021 the year of variety. 

Remember that time you bought something nice to wear at full price? After a few hours of checking for it on other sites, considering alternatives, pondering the material quality, how it sits and making sure the size was right using those size guides that ask for everything except for your credit score, you decided: I do really want it and you clicked buy, and that hard-earned cash flies out of your account and you feel an elated dread. When celebrities buy those things, it’s the same as you pouring tap water. They don’t even drink tap water. You cannot hold them up to your expectations of what a human is. When Kim Kardashian mentions jetting off to her little private island, remember that is her local park and spare yourself a few beats per minute.  

Those little anthropomorphic animals look cute as hell, but also let’s take a detached look at what Animal Crossing is. According to NPR  “the main goal of the game, if there is one, is to fully upgrade your house and pay off your debt”. That is real life, people. You are playing a simple-life version of your 2020s-must-have-a-career-life to escape said real life, which you spent £50 of the get-out-of-real-life-debt money on.

Your generation fucked it – all of it – so let the younger ones figure things out for themselves. You’ll be dead soon, anyway. What do you care, grandpa?  

The faux-academia of film and television fans always makes me howl. (I howl at myself too, it’s fine.) You’re looking at a box with moving images, you don’t need to let it ruin your day all the time.

So you were made redundant, and a million other people applied for the same job as you, and you didn’t manage to stick to that five year plan. It can feel like you’ve failed – like others have managed to steam ahead of you this year. But there’s been a bloody pandemic. Allow yourself. Do the best you can, whatever that is. Keep yourself feeling okay. Sure, life might turn out a little differently to what you expected, but there’s nothing wrong with that. Health is wealth. 

That being said… 

This needs to stop in 2021, too. There’s a fine line between self-belief and ramming all your achievements down everyone’s throat. It’s a shit time for all at the moment: unemployment is rife, the economy in tatters. We don’t need to go on Twitter and smell every ounce of jubilation coming off your sweaty hands as you type “I DID CORPSE POSE TODAY” or “GREAT NEWS COMING SOON” (said news being you made another damn banana bread). 

Modestly celebrate your triumphs by all means, but buy a gratitude diary for the mundane victories. Or celebrate it with a closed community because, frankly, every time I see your new Strava PB I think to myself: you can’t outrun being a wanker.

@_rhysthomas_