High-waisted jeans, books, and other ways to start the new year right.

Five completely unproven tips for a successful start to 2023

Back on New Year’s Eve 2020, I wrote about how stupid and pointless celebrating the new year felt. The whole thing was bunch of BS. Or, more poetically, a crock of poop. That was, mind you, in the midst of a still-raging-at-full-throttle pandemic—closures and mask mandates and virtual-everything still in force. So, it didn’t feel like a particularly hopeful time. More like a Groundhog Day kind of time: everything sucks and nothing is going to change. Going back and reading that post now—boy was I cranky! We all were!

THIS year, however, I am greeting the new year with a much perkier attitude. (I just typed “attidude” by mistake, and almost left it, because it is an excellent portmanteau of ‘attitude’ and ‘dude.’ If some dude gets all negative on your ass, you could be like ‘nice attidude.’ )

In fact, for someone who thinks marking the new year at the arbitrary seam between December and January—rather than at the start of the school year where it SHOULD be marked—is stupid, I am feeling downright elated. Part of it, no doubt, is the fact that this is the year my book comes out. But I think there’s more to it than that. And that if I could figure it out, package it up, and sell it to the masses, I would become a very rich lady.

So, just for fun, let’s pretend that what I’ve been doing over the past few days, and what I’m planning/hoping to do as 2023 gets underway, is some kind of secret formula for a fabulous start to a new year.

Here’s what you do:

1. Get a piercing. OK, I didn’t actually get a piercing. (And you don’t have to either.) But last week I took our kiddo Elm to get their septum pierced for their 16th birthday, and while we were there, I bought a little silver hoop for the second hole in my left ear, which I hadn’t worn anything in for years. Is this some kind of sad, pathetic attempt to look slightly cooler, and recapture a bit of the spirit of my youth as I edge closer to fifty? Yes, yes it is. And it feels great. More of this to come, I suspect.* (Sorry, kids!) Seriously, though: why not kick off the new year by resuming something you did when you were younger? Something not self-destructive and stupid, that is. Dye your hair red! Eat a bag of Doritos! Wear high-waisted jeans! Go crazy.

2. Wear high-waisted jeans. Right. So, look, ever since high-waisted jeans came back onto the scene a few years ago, I’ve been complaining about them. As a very short-waisted person, when I wear the things I look like I’ve fallen into them and am struggling to get out. Looking back at pictures of myself from middle and high school, I am alarmed. Don’t let the pants swallow you, Jane! I want to say. Grab onto a branch or a rope or something! Take off your oversized Hard Rock cafe T-shirt and wave it overhead to signal for help! And truthfully, a lot of times when I see teenagers and young adults in high-waisted jeans today, my immediate thought is: oh, honey. It can be an extremely unflattering look when executed poorly.
   
   Recently, though, I decided I wanted to get some of those wide, cropped jeans people are wearing of late. (You know the ones.) Naturally, because it’s an on-trend look, every pair of such jeans I found had about a two-foot rise. For whatever reason, though, I decided to say fuck it and bought them anyway. The other night, I wore them out to dinner with the mister, with a top sort of semi-tucked in, and I’ll be damned if it didn’t look pretty good. Or at least not like I was in denim quicksand, anyway. Also? High-waisted jeans are like built-in Spanx. Sheila was held in nice and tight, and between that and my super-hip extra earring, I probably looked, like, 46.** I suppose my advice here isn’t literally that you should wear high waisted jeans; it’s that you should try something you’ve previously written off as stupid / unappealing / not for you. Because you never know.

3. Do dry January. Or dry some of January. Or dry first week of January, if you prefer. Whatever. I did it for the first time in 2021 (maybe that’s why I was so grumpy about the impending new year? Hahahah), and really liked it, so I’ve decided to make it an annual thing. I enjoy my white wine, probably too much, and I definitely drink more than usual during the holidays. So Dry January is a good time to reset, give the ole liver a break, and remind myself that I can survive quite happily without alcohol. It’s never as hard as I think it’s going to be, except at around 5pm on Fridays and Saturdays.*** Here’s my advice, though, if you plan to it: Do not—I repeat, do NOT—give up sugar or other “bad” foods at the same time as booze. I mean, seriously, why would you be that mean to yourself? Or do you think you’re better than me? DO YOU?

4. Read like a motherfucker. I stopped doing my author interview show, The Zeitgeist, back in the Fall, in part because I wanted to have more time to read for sheer pleasure. Since then, I’ve been enjoying a veritable orgy of books, in both print and audiobook form, and it is a goddamned DELIGHT. (Here, check out some of the books I’ve been reading of late.) But I am greedy. I want to read even MORE OF THE BOOKS! How will I do this, given that I can neither add hours to the day nor clone myself? It’s the smartphone, stupid. There’s no getting around it. I love my phone’s many spectacular powers, but when I have downtime, it is wayyyy too easy to pick the thing up and get sucked into the latest Elon Fuckface mishegoss on Twitter or start Googling random questions (Name of kid from ‘give me a pizza with nothing’ 80s string cheese commercial? Leonard Bernstein gay? Two weeks old deli turkey ok to eat or will die?) instead of picking up a damned book. And the next thing I know, I’ve wasted 15 minutes ingesting the intellectual equivalent of Circus Peanuts, when I could have been reading instead. No more, I say! I am determined to break my mindless phone-grabbing habit this year, and grab mindlessly for books instead. I am pumped about this plan. Join me if you like. Not a book person? Weird, but OK. Then just resolve to do more of something you love this year—and do what you must do to make it happen, even if it’s hard. (But don’t do more of the thing you love if it’s, like, heroin.)

5. Start the new year with a walk. The mister and I spent New Year’s Eve down on the Cape, where he played a first night celebration. We stayed overnight at the home of the fine fella who played bass on the gig, and his kind ladyfriend, and on New Year’s Day, we all went for a walk at a nature preserve nearby. Marsh, dunes, beach, ocean, big ripply sky—gorgeous. But even if it had been a walk around our own neighborhood, it would have been invigorating. There’s something supremely salubrious about walking as a start to a new year. It’s healthy and easy and conducive to contemplation and/or observation. Fresh air feels good in your lungs. And when you see other people out walking, you can make the decision to assume the best about them (They’re out walking for pleasure! How bad can they be?) and say hello, or Happy New Year, and feel temporarily oblivious to the suckage of humanity. (Or optimistic and grateful for the great human family, if you’re a glass-half-full type.)

   But it’s January 3! you say. It’s too late! No! It’s never too late! Just get your ass outside and walk. Walk for ten minutes or walk for an hour. Walk while wearing high-waisted jeans and jewelry in the earhole of your youth. Walk drunk if you want, and if you’re not doing dry January, but be careful. Do not walk while reading a book, because you might bump into a pole or tree. (Consider an audiobook instead?) But walk, my friends. Of all of these random tips, this is the very best and most effective one—for the new year, and for any time you need to feel renewed. Walk.

And/or leap.

Thank you, as always, for reading. Here’s to a wicked awesome 2023.

*I actually just bought some secondhand Doc Marten boots also.

**I am 48.

***Some people like to call Dry January “Mary Janeuary,” if you catch my drift. Not me personally, of course.