It’s Time to Cut the Shit

On turning 36 and the 20 small things that actually matter.

$1 thrifted Christmas gown (as mentioned below) off the Halloween rack.

For many, the New Year promises an opportunity for a fresh start. Or at the very least, a cheese and booze detox.

For others, September’s back-to-school energy breathes new life. It makes us want to put ourselves out there again.

For me, taking honest stock is captured across a holy trinity: the New Year, September, and my birthday.

Conveniently, this checkpoint trifecta happens to be spaced four months apart. And without fail, each one brings a pause, an internal audit, and the inevitable wince that I’m not further ahead.

It’s about to be my 36th birthday.

This means I’m one year closer to needing a hip replacement. More justified in being asked, “Are your parents still living?” by a 60-year-old woman who deemed me a peer. A little less likely to put on “mom jeans” as a non-mom and have them not just read as “mom,” if you will.

I don’t think I’m alone when I say that the last year has been unusual.

For good and bad, it’s been unpredictable and uproarious.

I think I can represent the collective when I say, we’re tired.

We’re tired of not knowing if we’ll get jobs again.
We’re tired of not knowing if our neighbours will fall in love with bots.
We’re tired of not knowing if the world is gonna blow.
We’re tired of not having the kind of community we had growing up.
We’re tired of having zero attention spans.

Somehow, we’ve gone embarrassingly astray in our relentless pursuit of more.

We bought the McMansions, but the cheap laminate cost too much to replace.

We used our credit cards for the vacations, but we were too stressed to enjoy them.

We posted perfectly staged dinner tables, but had nothing to say when it came time to eat.

The reflection of the last year, my 35th year, is this: it’s time to cut the shit.

To offset the estrangement, singed retinas, and gluttonous bloat, we need to get back to basics.

Perhaps these tradwife-adjacent, peasant-skirted weirdos have a point: less is more.

If we step off the treadmill, acknowledge the cataclysmic shift, and play with some wild-ferment yeast, we might discover that we already have everything we need.

We’ve proven ourselves. We played the game. None of it made us happier.

In the last year, I wrapped up ever working for anyone else. After 13 years in tech, juggling contract clients by night, gut-renovating three properties, trying to write, and be a good friend and partner, I let a lot go. I got laid off, dropped clients, sold things, and created space.

It took months—hell, almost my entire 35th year—to arrive here.

So, with 36 in the queue ready to drop, I want this year to be guided by the small and sweet. As I wrote in my New Year post, the antidote to uncertainty is to chip away. It’s not about exhaustive big swings, but righting our ships incrementally.

In honour of my birthday, and our theme of lightening the load, here are 20 small things to look forward to this year:

1. Outdoor swimming: Grab your finest aquatic garb, full-body saturation will soon be upon us! Pools, lakes, and oceans. We don’t do ponds, and rivers are the poor man’s lake (everyone knows it). Taking the literal plunge is an unmatched summer treat, and we’re ready for sweet release.

2. Bonfires: Whether it’s because I ranked in 23andMe’s 99th percentile for “most neanderthal”, I can’t be sure. Regardless, we can all agree that fire is magic. Sitting around a bonfire bonds us. It’s a truth serum that forces us to drop walls and shed skin.

3. Thrifting gems to unearth: Listen, not everyone is gifted at the thrifted. Long before thrifting haul videos made my sport popular, you could find me a siftin’. In high school, I used a KitKat lunchbox as a purse. This year, I got a velvet, fur-trimmed Christmas gown for $1. I also acquired a deceased ballerina’s glove collection (hey, if the glove fits).

4. Getting better at things: Nary a year goes by that we get worse at stuff. Sure, there are shutdown series, bad stretches, and several consecutive months we’d rather forget, but overall, learning and getting better remain constant. That’s life.

5. Shutting down some assholes: There are times when we bite our tongue, weighing the pros and cons of telling someone deserving off. After all, we’re adults with self-control! We’re better than that! Why get worked up for nothing? While I mostly air in this direction, there is a duty I now feel as a fully-formed adult, to let line-crossing creeps know that I see them, and they suck.

6. Fun shows: People are out there making some good shit, and this year, we’re gonna get to see some of it. Music, comedy, one-woman shows, photography, painting, jumping on one foot playing a trombone. Why don’t we let ourselves get taken away? Let’s go.

7. Roadtrips: Waking up at the crack of dawn, coffees loaded, a down-filled feather throw pillow in the front seat (don’t knock it till you try it). There’s nothing quite like hitting the pavement early and eating a bag of gas station cheese curds before noon. Destination unknown.

8. More good writing: The more we write, the better we get. Over the next year, if we protect a few minutes a day, we’ll have our own shabbily painted, little library to wedge into our lawn for neighbours and passersbys to pick from (or not).

9. Make some money: Not to be uncouth, suddenly capitalistic, or to bait-switch this thing into something it is not, but this year will bring shillings (for all of us). And while the focus is on small realness, there is ease and exhalation with being above water and on the board. I haven’t been for a while, so here’s to getting back in the green.

10. Putting into print: There’s a shift towards the tangible. A thing that we can hold in our hands. Wouldn’t it be cool to print a book, a zine, or a Substack collection that gets shoved into bookbags, stained with drool, and leafed through on trains somewhere?

11. Pet naps: As a childless adult, nothing is cuter than your pet falling asleep on you. We have more of this to look forward to. That’s all.

12. New things to eat: I love cooking, and I love eating. The next few months promise both. We’ll try new recipes, burn a few things, and freestyle wilting fridge items into a questionable medley. We’ll also eat some memorable dishes that make life worth living.

13. Redeem airplane points: Before you get the wrong picture, let it be known that I’m not a points collector or couponer. I wish I could be that organized. The only thing I passively accrue are airplane points (Aeroplan, if you must know). And every year, we bank them for an outlandish one-way business class flight with lay-flat seats. Highly recommend.

14. Garden basil: If pesto isn’t one of your favourite foods, I can respect our differences, but I don’t like it. If you don’t love basil, I will clock this fact and stash it into a folder of oddities about you. But beyond that, growing your own herbs is a joy and gift that keeps on giving (until frost).

15. Touching toes: As someone who was born with the flexibility of a mostly wheelchair-bound geriatric, a strange shift is happening. Suddenly, I’m able to bend over and reach into the general vicinity of my toes. To many, this is a marker of average wellness. To me, it’s almost mystical. Why now? Why suddenly me? Is this self-employment? Stay tuned.

16. Not working for anyone I don’t want to work with: Being in an environment that could, at any moment, start branding employees with pet names adjacent to “family” never sat right. There’s a particular confidence in stepping out and breaking the chain. Designing our own day is a privilege that hits different, and like getting your first dishwasher or king-size bed, there’s no going back.

17. Hosting events: Maybe it’s the growing stemware collection or the adorable glass olive martini picks I thrifted for $1, but I feel called to host. Whether it’s new or old friends for dinner, or more community events, I plan to follow this and see where it goes. If at my place, we’re on septic, so please, no unnecessary flushing!

18. Saying “no”: Historically, in a way that doesn’t suit my personality, I’ve been bad at saying no. I agree to too much, string things along, and feel guilty for not showing up. But stretching ourselves shouldn’t come at our own expense. Plus, turning what’s inside us into something real requires great attention.

19. Moving into our house: We gutted an 1890’s townhouse down to the gills. Sadly, we didn’t find gold or even an opium pipe behind the walls. It’s been a mountain of coordination and hemorrhage of borrowed funds. This year, we’re going to move in. While not exactly part of this living “small mantra”, being close to family and friends will make way for stackable moments, like wine nights, patio hangs, and pizza nights.

20. Saying “yes”: Part of this “doing it my way” era means I haven’t left much opportunity for shit I don’t wanna do, but probably should. And this isn’t totally right either. Sometimes going out when we’d rather be in pyjamas, showing up at the event alone, and signing up for the weird workshop are what we need. Mallard feather habadashery intensive, anyone?

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When I set out to write this, I thought, “I’m turning 36, so the list will be 36 small things, of course!“ Then I got to number 8 or 9 and realized: holy fuck, 36 is a lot of items.

36 is not light and airy.

36 is not a cute, lean 20-something. It’s a full 30-something who has seen some shit and should not be underestimated.

So, to save us both, I tightened the list to a cool, skimmable 20.

Why? Because sometimes less is more.