MILLENNIAL DIARY
FOR millennials, every day of the year is like that hinterland between Christmas and New Year — when you’re just kind of sleepwalking through the week, not knowing what day it is or why you’re here or what you’re doing. Halfpissed and full of self-loathing and the conviction that soon you’ll do better? Dreading going out and wondering why you agreed to that party tonight when all you want to do is curl up at home and cradle your swollen gut and watch kids’ films? Spare a thought for us millennials, who live with this feeling all year round.
Today, the pressure to set resolutions for 2018 will get to people young and old. Yet while for everyone else, self evaluation only comes around once a year ( job interviews notwithstanding), millennials are bombarded with suggestions for selfimprovement relentlessly — we call it #goals. We live in a perpetual NYE, thinking that the time our potential will finally be unlocked is just around the corner.
The Hadids are sibling goals, Roz Purcell is body goals, Zayn Malik is hair goals, Harry and Meghan, after that engagement photo shoot, are the relationship goals du jour — but that could swing back to Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds any day. There are holiday goals, squad goals, brunch goals and Christmas goals. We are forever lusting over somebody, something, somewhere else. #Goals has actually just become a socially acceptable way of expressing envy — or of deliberately inciting envy in others.
In short, our obsession with #goals is something of a generational neurosis. It has also given us a drastically skewed idea of what we should be aiming towards. Need it be said that there shouldn’t be ‘goals’ for hair. It’s hair.
For a long time I had a scrap of paper in my wallet with a list of resolutions — it started in 2007 and I tweaked them very slightly for the next few years but fundamentally they stayed exactly the same: lose weight, drink less, stop thinking about sex in Mass. My weight has inevitably crept up steadily as I left 17 further and further away, I drunk much more for a while and then I drunk much less, I no longer go to Mass. The little piece of paper began to make me feel sad after a while. It became a totem of failure, of my own shortcomings, lack of willpower and fat ass. Now I keep it there for a laugh, as a reminder of a simpler time with simpler worries and a reminder to enjoy the ass I have now, because it won’t be getting any better.
But it’s easy to get swept away. Every bit of advertising since Halloween has been aimed at trying to make us indulge, treat ourselves, relax. Feck the calories — it’s Christmas. Buy a 24-pack of minibreaded cheese balls and eat the leftovers for breakfast in a sandwich! Want that sandwich to be made out of panettone? Go for it! You deserve it hun! From tomorrow we won’t be able to move for marketing telling us we’re fat, lazy and disgusting and need to join a gym/buy a pair of €100 leggings/subsist on soup and Special K.
My resolutions over the past few years have been a bit more flexible. And singular. Like most millennials, I cannot multitask — we need one clear, simple instruction at a time. Two years ago it was ‘Take compliments’. In Ireland, we think it’s polite to imply that our complimenter is blind, mad, or stupid and say, ‘This? I found it on the floor of Penneys it was €4, it makes me look like a heroin addict’. Learning to say ‘Thank you, that’s really kind’, is good for the soul — but it takes a lot of practice.
Last year it was ‘don’t make excuses, just say no to social events that I would rather eat my own hair than go to’. I have had a blissful year of saying, ‘Sorry, I can’t go. Why? Oh, I don’t want to. But thank you’. People take it surprisingly well. I’ve gotten rather too good at it, however, so 2018 may well have to be the year of, ‘Say yes sometimes and suck it up and enjoy yourself, you miserable witch’.
This might be the year when you’ll stop filling up on bread, do the mindfulness, and master bullet journalling, but it probably won’t. Here are some ideas for realistic, lowkey goals for 20-somethings
1) Unfollow everyone on Instagram who makes you feel fat, ugly or boring. This doesn’t just apply to ‘influencers’ peddling skinny (read: laxative) tea and bikinis, but people you may know IRL. Follow artists and creators and people who just post pictures of their baby and puppy napping together. This is as satisfying as throwing away and replacing all your manky old underwear. It’s like getting out a really stubborn ingrown hair. It’s bliss.
2) Eat your greens. Avocados don’t count.
3) Seek out views that are different to yours — and I don’t mean getting in arguments in the comments sections. Follow some accounts and pages that you find objectionable. Read what they’re saying. Then get the targeted advertising and understand what they’re hearing in their echo chamber. In Prince Harry’s interview with Obama (#RadioGoals) the other day, the former president expressed concern that young people are growing up only reading and listening to things that reinforce their own views. Believe me, I know how warm and cosy it is in the echo chamber — but it’s not getting us anywhere. Let’s make Obama Bae proud of us.
4) Put your phone in a different room overnight. Don’t let the last thing you do at night be a quiz to find out what type of bread you are based on your star sign. Don’t let the first thing you do in the morning be scrolling endlessly through nonsense online until you’re not really sure whether you’re awake or asleep anymore. Buy an alarm clock. Disclaimer: I don’t know if this one is even possible, I’m not there yet.
5) Stop screenshotting and sending to the group WhatsApp. It’s mean and it makes you feel mean. It’s nice to feel nice. Probably.
6) Stop stalking your boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend online. See above.
7) Call your granny, you self-involved arsehole. It’ll make her day.