Originally published in December 2021.
In an attempt to shake the single community like a snow globe, I’m going to yell at you for a minute. Know that I yell with love, compassion, and cold brew. I am one of us, I have been for 14 years, and I’d like to teach us how to holiday, because some of you still do it wrong. STOP. Stop buying into the bullshit that being single on New Year’s is a frown. Please, please stop moving through life at a societally assumed deficit. Shake off the cloak of assumptive sadness the world loves to toss over the shoulders of singles and realize that literally nothing is holding you back from living—and celebrating—a full life.
New Year’s Eve is one of my favorite holidays, because I’ve learned how to do the goddamned thing correctly. Honestly, couples could learn from me too, so if there are two names on your mail feel free to keep reading. Obviously I’m blanketing ALL of this with a giant Omicron-shaped tarp, because if you’re single you know that doing most things alone presents additional layers of difficulty and logistics, being sick the most obnoxious of them all, so let’s stay home and healthy and use my advice next year, cool?
There are three classic ways that single people fuck up New Year’s Eve and thus kick off a fresh new year in last year’s laundry. I want better for us. I want us to enjoy the flipping of calendars, the resetting of insurance deductibles, and a fresh pot of paid vacation days. We get to do much more than just survive the holidays—and any messages telling you how to survive them doesn’t think you’re good enough to have anything more than a survival strategy. Fuck “surviving” New Years. Let’s cover it in glitter instead.
#1 Not Planning Ahead
Absolutely iconic. We go into New Year’s Eve with some sort of Tito’s-infused “best night ever” mentality but don’t actually put an action plan in place to set ourselves up for success. Your biggest mistake is thinking that New Year’s Eve happens to you. You happen to New Year’s Eve right back. Band together! Take the magic of the evening and a chilled bottle of Korbel and give them something to work with, dammit!
When you don’t plan, when you figure you’ll just “do whatever” or party-hop, I would bet you all the peppermint bark I got for Christmas you’ll end up crying outside a dive bar before 11pm. Plan ahead. Know precisely where you’re going, who you’re going with, and make sure the evening involves as FEW location changes as possible. When you commit to plans, and you’ve chosen those plans wisely, everyone is free to let go and enjoy the moment, instead of worrying about whether or not they’re missing out on something more fun somewhere else. Don’t be a fucking millennial about it.
Personally, my New Year’s Eve formula that has served me well many a December is a 9pm reservation at a small-ish restaurant. It is best if that restaurant is within walking distance of someone’s home. Our goal is to cut out as many transportation needs as possible. Pre-game at the designated house, make sure everyone brings something to contribute. A potluck cheese board is always fun.
Expert-level New Year’s Eve professionals also bring the following to the restaurant: First, a box of sparklers, maybe even two boxes because people love these frikkin things. And second: A bottle of bourbon for the kitchen and staff with a bow tied around its neck. These people are working on their holiday, acknowledge them. You don’t need to spend a lot of money on this, the gesture itself is what matters. Nobody’s turning down Kirkland whiskey, it’s fantastic.
At some point the staff will start partying too, it’s a very loose and happy environment, this is why I love this plan so much. And please, again, remember the restaurant staff is working on their holiday—be EXTRA AWESOME TO THEM. One New Years that stands out for me is the year a server’s friend who happened to be a drag queen stopped by and we all got a show for free. There’s often a champagne toast for the entire restaurant at midnight, and if you want to sneak the extra mini bottle you brought out of your purse at this point no one is going to notice. Go home well before 1am and you’re certain to find a cab or Lyft. Anything after that…goodbye and good luck.
I have many more recommendations and strategies, they are actually an entire chapter of my book, check them out if you’d like more of my pristine wisdom.
#2 Doing Nothing At Midnight
Will you amateurs please stop just standing there alone at midnight while everyone kisses each other? Is that fun for you? No? Then why do you keep doing it like you have no other options?? When you fail to find a way to occupy yourself at midnight, that tells me you are unimaginative. I said it.
If you want to stand there and be sad, stand there and be sad. But I ain’t gonna. I am going to find a way to occupy myself that has some self worth it it, instead of reflecting, in the very first moments of a brand-new year, on how I “don’t have someone.” Fuck that diagonally.
This is also covered in far more detail in my book, but you need to identify an occupation. Personally, I like to stand on a chair or countertop and take photos of everyone cheering and kissing at midnight, which are really cool to share with everyone afterward—bonus points if you throw streamers. Other times I’ve been the one pouring the champagne for the first toast in a new year and passing glasses around. I’ve also totally removed myself and gone outside to listen to all the other parties in the neighborhood or across the airshaft do their countdowns too, which has been really cool. The point is, find something to do, rather than just assuming your fate is to feel left out, lonely, and sad at the stroke of midnight. You have options, pick one.
#3 Masking Singleness Rather Than Celebrating Singlehood
New Year’s Eve isn’t about numbing your singleness and finding a way to make it “okay” that you’re single—it’s about celebrating everything you have and everything you are. And being single cannot dull the shine on any of these things because it isn’t something about you that’s wrong. It’s simply something society doesn’t like because society is basic as shit. We are not operating at a deficit, and our lives don’t have to center the one thing we’ve been taught to believe we’re lacking. Your job on New Year’s Eve, and any holiday, is not to overcome the fact that you’re single. It’s to live life as a whole, valid person who doesn’t deserve a lesser version of things just because she’s not doing them in tandem. That’s insane.
I don’t want to come up with New Year’s Plans that are “good enough” for a single girl, I want to live the ideal version of my night thank you. I don’t want to spend every New Year’s Eve longing for the ones where I “have someone.” That is simply not how I want to live, craving some future state I don’t have right now, instead of celebrating how fucking lucky I am to be alive, to be healthy, and to be able to do whatever I want 100% of the time. You get to choose how you spend your evening too, either buying into the world’s bullshit that being single is just so sad, or living it the fuck up.
I am tired of the single community making old choices for new years. I am tired of tears at midnight. I am tired of the constant bitching and moaning about dating apps, instead of just deleting them because all they’ve actually done is stolen your time, money, and mental health for years on end. Honestly, he’s not in there—delete. I am tired of TV show after TV show using single people as court jesters, putting us in rooms (or on islands) together for other people’s entertainment. Stick five struggling married couples on an island—that shit I’ll watch. The point is, I’m tired of the way the world views and treats singles, and if it’s going to change, I think the way we treat ourselves is the catalyst.
This New Year’s Eve, do better. Plan ahead, adjust your perspective, and let go of the narratives that are keeping you sad and small and blind to how full, beautiful, and lucky our lives are. There is so much more to single life than what is missing, and I hope that from the very first second of 2022, we start to celebrate like it.