Thank You, Next
The Old-Fashioned Way
Soon the sun will set on this year and rise a few hours later over the next, turning news into memories and swapping disappointment for hope. Thank U, Next isn’t a boppy millennials’ anthem; Thank You, Next is the millennia-long truth.
Every year, I give serious thought to a fresh theme or set of resolutions. It’s an annual ritual that helps me make sense of things that have happened and feel in control of what comes next. For example, I once had a year of “yes,” during which I accepted almost every invitation I received. This resolve landed me at many random, boring events and get-togethers, but many fun ones too. I added new contacts, unblocked others, sampled new flavors, and retried things I still didn’t like. Often, a single “yes” mushroomed into several more. I traveled more, I worked more, I slept less. I learned that “yes” made me feel present and powerful. I rode the opportunities that passed by me like waves, and I was largely content not making my own. Through today, that year of “yes” fortified me into reflexively leaping forward before doubt or indecision shackles me down.
For a few reasons this year, I made only various modest resolutions. Things like doing the splits, considering a bigger-than-a-blog-post writing project, and figuring out the next long-term step in my career. I thought 2018 would be an in-between time, serving filler designed to swell the drama without rupturing it, like seasons 4-6 of Game of Thrones.
As the year unfolded, however, my humble intentions were largely supplanted by grander, more demanding designs. Instead of doing the splits, I ran a marathon. Instead of casually outlining and indexing elementary writing ideas, I workshopped a major writing project with one of my favorite authors in her own home. Instead of researching possible, positive career shifts, I landed a job I enjoy and feel respected doing. I didn’t expect these wonderful developments to come my way this year, but next year, they will be at the outset.
In addition to these and other surprising gifts, 2018 also had a fair amount of unexpected turbulence. I wrestled with a heavyweight over a significant debt he owed me. My father leaned on me as a professional and as a daughter when his business suddenly closed, his purpose in life shuttered. Close friends were seriously betrayed, or mourning the loss of a parent, job, pregnancy, or other friend, taking me with them into the part of our lives when time becomes calamity’s bribe. I chipped one of my two front teeth and regrettably rushed to the nearest dentist, who made it much, much worse. (I eventually found a reputable professional who fixed both the chip and the unsightly drilling error.) And, it’s a long story (one I have promised to tell on this blog eventually), but about 85% of my “stuff” has been trapped in a storage unit and I had to go to work one day wearing a bathing suit bottom as underwear. For all the time Ariana spent dating, then dating Pete, getting engaged, breaking it off, writing Thank U, Next, and making the video, I was waiting for these lessons in love, patience, and pain to become stale things of “last year.”
Plus, there are the things I didn’t do, the things I didn’t get in 2018. There are several things I saw for 2018 me, but will not be. I pursued some of these things as aggressively as I could, even recklessly in the rain. Others stayed silent wishes blown over a candle. I can be stubborn about these things. I can drag the desire for them into 2019, but it is heavy.
It’s still a little early in my mind to commit to a particular theme or resolution, but like always, I am prepared to say Thank You to what has been, and Next to what is ahead. In 2019, I want more of the inexplicable normalcy in hearing take-out receipt number “65” and “72” called out before “64” at a busy restaurant counter. “Thank you. Next,” they say at the register. It isn’t ordered, it isn’t predictable. But it is orderly and predicated on some logic or system that works. I also want to see more chubby ladies at the airport wearing t-shirts that say, “Exercise? I thought you said extra fries.”