A Very Reasonable New Year’s Eve Survival Guide
It’s the best of times, it’s the worst of times, it’s NYE! Save yourself some trauma and read my handy-dandy list of lessons to have a fun, emotionally safe night!
Tonight does not have to be THE BEST NIGHT. EVER.
You do not need to spend countless hours planning an epic rager, nor do you need to spend hundreds of dollars on plans where a dude is 100% going to spill beer on your shoes. Instead, just make sure you are around people you like. If you’re with people you adore, you are going to have a good time no matter what.
Glitter, in any form, is allowed tonight. Indulge.
It’s okay to get wasted and make-out with your best friend on the floor of a taxi cab while your other friends photographically document the debauchery.
You’re young, damn it. And this is what youth is for. ALSO, this will make a great story for YEARS to come.
When in doubt, play Tears For Fears’ “Head Over Heels,” turn the volume up, and dance, dance, dance.
NOTE: You can use this advice on any day, at any time, for the rest of your life. You’re welcome.
Some years you will have a wonderful person to kiss and to hold when the clock strikes midnight. Some years you will be locked in a bathroom, fully clothed, crying in the tub about your loneliness.
I’ve learned not to get so taken with the perfect night nor so low with the ruined night by remembering that the only thing that really matters is that I am cool with me. I like me. It took a long time to get here but the simple fact that I like myself makes the highs and lows more manageable.
If you are sixteen and for some bizarre reason you are partying with your friends in a hotel room on the Sunset Strip, if you are sixteen and this is the first time you’ve ever really had a drink, DO NOT do Evan’s vodka Jello shots.
You can’t handle them.
Take yourself to brunch today.
Order the avocado toast, pull out your new Moleskin notebook, and write out what you want to accomplish in the next year. Let yourself dream a little. What is the most audacious goal you have? What’s the ideal self you want to be?
Did you know that at a certain point in my life, I stopped having dreams and it took me writing down hopeful thoughts for me to remember, “Oh yeah – I have dreams!” It’s kind of amazing but you can become whatever person you want to be and you can achieve whatever kind of dreams you have. It just takes work. If you want to be a more honest person, that’s probably not just going to happen. You’re not going to wake up and immaculate conception-style, presto-chango, you’re honest. Instead you make a choice to be more honest. You make a choice to finish that pilot script. You make a choice to finally lose three pounds and you live by it. It’s scary how powerful your choices are.
READ ONLY IF IT’S NYE and you are upset, teary, and/or drunk:
I think you are special. Honestly. And the thing to remember right now is this is just one silly night in a lifetime of silly nights. For better or for worse, nothing is that big of a deal so you can brush this off. Let’s get a glass of water (or tea! do you like tea?) and watch something on Netflix. How about Cheers?
What are you doing this NYE? Tell me! I wanna know.