At 30: Resolving to Keep Improving

New Year’s resolutions have always felt like a Christmas hangover to me. By the time January first rolls around, I’ve spent the past week abandoning my diet, floating on wine island, and retreating to the adolescent dependencies that come with a long weekend under my parents’ roof. As a result, I’ve had little time to myself to feel contented by what’s around me, let alone decide on ways to build on those pleasures.

Rather than sprint to the finish line with Ryan Seacrest in 2015, I decided to give myself the last month of my 20s to actually map out the lessons I’ve learned. I’ve gone through emails and letters with friends, had conversations with family, and been truthful about how incredibly wrong I’ve been about how astonishingly much. Here are 30 things I’ve committed to taking with me into the next decade of my life.

1. Personally and professionally, you are your worst critic. That means you need to identify the people you can trust to respond fairly to your work or daily decisions, and have confidence in their advice. This assemblage should function as your own personal editorial staff, and should always be given final right of refusal on everything from bathing suits to career shifts.
2. Never present problems without first considering solutions. At work, this makes you a valuable team member. At home, this makes you a better communicator. In life, this gives you a more positive outlook.
3. Self preservation can really mess some shit up for you.
4. Even when something won’t end well, the fact that it won’t end yet is sometimes reason enough to keep going.
5. Having influence starts with building trust. The more you focus on earning the confidence of the people around you, the more willing they’ll be to listen to and consider your opinions. This is true everywhere from the board room to the peewee football field.
6. Have at least one friend you can email at 11 p.m. and get a response from by the time you get to work. You never know when you’ll need someone to talk you out of buying a romper or booking a weekend trip to see your ex.
7. Distance functions as both a great inconvenience and an invaluable magnifier.
8. If music isn’t shared, it isn’t heard. (Bless you, Spotify and Soundcloud for making this easy).

9. If our brains really do run on a circuit, rewiring them is really just a matter of finding the right electrician. The same goes for getting over someone.

10. It might feel good to dissolve whatever’s weighing you down into an entire bottle of wine. But that shit always comes back up to haunt you in the morning.

11. Everyone should have a sense of self to retreat into when the day is over. Privacy isn’t overrated, it’s everything. If you’re in a relationship with someone who doesn’t respect that, it isn’t worth whatever level of intimacy you think you’ve achieved.

12. If you can’t be with the one you love, don’t love the one you’re with. That sucks for both of you.

13. People who treat other people poorly will get laid more than you can possibly fathom. While this is infuriating, know that they’re just picking off low-hanging fruit. The good stuff is worth climbing for.

14. Causing mischief purely for mischief’s sake is grossly underappreciated.

15. There is no such thing as meeting in the middle. Just accept the fact that sometimes, you’ll need to go the distance to make something work.

16. Nothing takes the taste out of peanut butter like unrequited love.

17. Reality will start to ripen for you at 28. You’ll be at your 8th wedding of the past two years, and you’ll realize the clock isn’t ticking in some distant closet in Narnia, it’s actually on your wrist. Instead of freaking out and settling for the next best thing, invest in a watch you actually like looking at, and focus on achieving what you want on your own.

18. Velcro isn’t some form of alchemy. It was made by a man who wondered why burrs wouldn’t stop sticking to him in the woods. Remember that the next time you’re annoyed by someone or something that’s following you around. It might be exactly what you need to keep it all together.

19. When it comes to relationships, she will always pick whoever is closest to her family. Respect the gravity of that, and either insert yourself at the dinner table, or get the hell out of the way for someone who will.

20. Don’t ever drink whiskey neat during cocktail hour if you’re not also consuming hors d’oeuvres. Doing so will only decrease your chances of making the after-party, and severely impact what would be your inevitable dance floor dominance.

21. “Emotionally unavailable” may occasionally (always) translate in your head as “looking to be saved.” More likely than not, it means “emotionally unavailable.”

22. Hangovers don’t actually exist until you’re 26 years old. Before then, scorpion bowls are still a fruity treat, $2 rail drinks are merely a fiscally responsible decision, and a Sunday Funday that ends well after Sunday Night Football won’t derail your entire week. Once you hit your late twenties, however, the very act of lifting your eyelids after a night of drinking will seem like an arduous task, you will spend your entire day at work hiding from your boss, and the persistent humming in your temples will feel like a condemnation of your behavior from whatever god you believe in.

23. Your mom was right. Thank You cards really are important.

24. When it comes to dancing, people care a lot more if you’re bashful than they do if you’re bad. Attempt absolutely every move you saw in the most recent Justin Bieber video, and do so with zeal.

25. Ask your grandparents as many questions as possible, as often as possible. Once they’re gone, those invaluable anecdotes that only they can provide you with are gone, too. And the responsibility of passing them on is yours to carry.

26. From time to time, we all get caught up weighing the future by its flaws, and not its potential. There will never be enough time, money or certainty to do x, y, or z. Book the flight, take the job, have sex at the wedding.

27. All the peacocking in the world can never outshine a well-timed, subtle joke. It’s the enormous difference between bravado and actual confidence.

28. Shame cannot survive being spoken. Understand this, and lean on the people around you sooner rather than later after you royally screw-up or get screwed out of something important to you.

29. Tacos, pizza, and ice cream are as essential to your happiness at the age of 30 as they were at the age of 10.

30. You are the foundation of your life’s infrastructure; don’t ask a friend, parent, sibling, or spouse to be that base for you. They are your frame when you need formatting, your insulation when you’re feeling exposed, and your windows when you’re visionless. But you are the only one worth building on.