The One Thing You Have to do This Year

2016 is over as of a few hours ago, and it was a doozy of a year. A bunch of people died, some other stuff happened, we elected a failed businessman to be President of the United States, and some other terrible stuff probably happened. It was a rough year, but 2017 doesn’t have to be that way. We can protect it. All you have it do to keep this year from being awful is…

Don’t fuck it up.

The problem with 2016 was that it was spoiled the minute people started telling each other it had gone wrong. If you’re baking a cake and let a bit of eggshell slip into the batter, you don’t throw the whole thing away and set your house on fire, but that’s what we did to 2016. Starting with the unfortunate death of a gorilla and culminating with the death of most of the 80’s, the internet spent most of the year convincing itself that 2016 was worse than any other year ever including the depression years and all wars. Some awful, awful things happened, but there’s always time for awful things to happen–tragedy doesn’t have a schedule, and no year gets away without a few terrible things. So here’s what to do for 2017: don’t fuck it up by letting everyone convince you it’s going to be as bad as the year before. When the news or the entire internet inevitably tells you that every celebrity is dying–mortality is weird, man–just remember that celebrities are people, and people die.

Donald Trump was also elected president back in 2016, and depending on your political beliefs or rationality, that either predicts a “great” future for the United States, or you’re worried this strange pumpkin-hued man is actually Sauron the Deceiver, chief threat to the world of men, and the living Lord of the Rings. Unfortunately, I cannot confirm or deny the supervillain potential of our new President, but I can say that if there’s one thing the American political system is incredible at, it’s keeping the President from getting anything done. If you hate the President, don’t just whine about it; whine about it, then do something that makes it so you won’t have to keep whining because I’m tired of hoping the people who write political posts on Facebook get Lupus.

Something unfortunate probably happened to you in 2016, or something so bad happened that you’re insulted by the thought of just calling it ‘unfortunate.’ No matter what happened in 2016, 2017 doesn’t need to be a continuation of that. The reason I don’t like the Transformers movies is because they’re essentially the same movie released a few years apart with a few different characters each time and a different cast of explosions. Don’t let 2017 be run by Michael Bay; nobody needs to have a year punctuated by gratuitous fire bombs, product placement, and self pity serenaded by Linkin Park. I’m optimistic about this year because it’s a new chance for new things to go wrong, and the problems from 2016 can fuck right off.