Top Ten Reasons 2016 Won't Be 'Your Year'

by Douglas Slayton    

   

Every year you tell yourself, your friends, and family that “things are going to turn around this year for me. I know I had a rough go of it last year, but this time things are going to go my way.”

Truth is: It isn’t. Here’s why

1. Those shitty things that happened in 2015? They still happened. 2016 doesn’t make the past go away, it just means that the sun circled the Earth and you didn’t die yet.
2. “I am going to turn myself around in 2016, I did some shit I am not proud of in 2015 but the past is the past.” Guess what? If you were a shitty person in 2015 you will be a shitty person in 2016. Getting a new calendar with cats on it doesn’t change what you did or that after the first week of January your resolution to be nicer to people will start to crack and you will fuck someone and not call them again, because that is who you are. You are a bad person, just fucking accept it.
3. Those people who you fucked over in 2015? They are making the same promises to themselves to “move on” or “forgive” or “this is going to be my year” but they aren’t going to either and when you see them at a bar or some mutual friends birthday party they will still want you to die and tell everyone there that you fucked them over last year and you won’t get to tell “your side of the story that will totally clear up this simple understanding” because that is a lie, you fucking liar.
4. You might promise everyone that you are going to finish that big creative endeavor like write that novel or record or run a marathon or call your mom more or whatever thing it is that you think is holding you back. You won’t and no one will be disappointed because they know you are a piece of shit who can’t follow through on anything but still pretend to like you because you have the best television and Game of Thrones is coming back in a few months and they want to get fucked up and ruin your house when Jon Snow dies (FUCKING SPOILERS ASSHOLE) because they won’t feel bad about it because it was you and you are shitty and slept with their sibling and never called them or copped up to the STI you left in your shitty, shitty wake.
5. That job you have that you hate? You are comfortable there and you won’t ever update your resume because it is so much work and the reason you have that job you hate is because you don’t want to do anything uncomfortable or that will actually change your life or require a risk of being hurt. It is way easier to just eat your shitty Subway sandwich everyday for lunch while the secretaries laugh and trade stories about the passes you made at them at the holiday party and how you are so sad and they get why your ex left you.
6. You aren’t going to eat better, because fuck you, that’s why! You are a drunk and you always will be a drunk because you can’t even look yourself in the mirror most days and admitting you have a problem would hurt too much so you will just drink cheap scotch and whiskies on the rocks till one day you forget all that shit you did and didn’t do because you poisoned your body to the point of forgetting because you are comatose.
7. You aren’t going to meet anyone new. You are going to stroll dive bars filled with people half your age who are just as lost as you but make ten times as much money as you do because life is fucked and you made some really shitty decisions in college or didn’t finish that last credit you need to get your BA in English so you could get your MFA in creative writing like you always said you would when you were in high school and jerked it to Kerouac.
8. You have a 77.5% chance of dying this year. Whether it be from natural causes (read: being a shitty unhealthy person) or gun violence, terrorism, climate change or other uncontrollable act, you might die and there is nothing you can do about it because that is the way it works.
9. If you do die it won’t matter, people might grieve for a few months but by the end of the year they will probably have moved on and told themselves that “2017 will be my year!” and they will be wrong but you won’t care because you had a meaningless life that ended with a meaningless death.
10. Your death, or any death, won’t matter because life is meaningless and you didn’t change shit or record that hit record or write that novel that changed some kids life. No one will remember you and you won’t care because you will be dead and death is the end. When you die there is nothing because the universe is cruel and there is no god and no one liked you to begin with so fuck you.

Happy fucking New Year asshole. No one really loves you anyway.

Doug Slayton is Professor Editor-in-Chief of Uncanny Valley Magazine.