To 2019: The Year of Ana

The first weekend of 2019! It's Sunday morning, the sun has yet to rise, and I am nearly recovered from the holidays. They were wonderful. I spent Christmas with my sister and her family in Jamaica* and New Years in Charlottesville. It was lovely to catch up with old friends, meeting new babies and fiances, getting tours of new homes, dancing, laughing. I cherished every second. The best part, though, was, I didn't miss any of it in the way I normally do, and I was excited to come back. For someone who cares deeply about home, my favorite part of 2018 is that after a short time, I'm happy to call Seattle home. Additionally, my high school nick name is still a secret, I have yet to lock myself out of my apartment, and after the re-branding to Ana is complete, the company name can be changed to either Annazon or Amazana. We cannot rest on these laurels, though. We must look forward to 2019, and with that, here are some goals:

1. Moonlight. By contract, I'm not allowed to have a second source of income, so this will be pro bono. Office ping pong lessons. I already have one client, and it's great. I feel like I'm teaching tennis again, running drills: "crosscourt, crosscourt, down the line. Now go for the kill!" I'm currently accepting students for spring sessions.

2. Ride the bus. Not the drinking game. The actual bus. When the commute is over a mile, I default to Lyft, because it's easy and saves a bit of time. Plus, after mastering the New York subway, I'm slightly intimidated by the bus system. However, I don't need to spend ten dollars to get somewhere when I could get there for free. This resolution began yesterday. The bus was an eclectic bunch, and when a group of lively elderly folks hopped on, the guy beside me informed me he "had too many mushrooms for this bus ride." To which I responded, "Or maybe, it was the perfect amount." We were both going to watch the Seahawks, though he's been on too many hallucinogens this year to follow the team. He told of the merits of DMX - or DSW - or some acronym with a D. Apparently, it was the drug Moses was smoking (consuming?) on the top of the mountain when he brought down the Ten Commandments, and the drug our body ejects as we die which causes people who are revived to reference an out-of-body experience. He suggested I try. I laughed at the ridiculousness of the situation. He gave me his number. And there's my dating update, everyone. I'm pumped to ride the bus; I think I'll get some great material.

3. Don't look at page views of my blog posts. It's easy to do, especially since my default page is the stats page, but I find it affects my perception of what I wrote. For inquiring minds, blogs about dates get a lot more page views. I'm not writing this for anyone else, though. I'm writing for myself - and for the entire world when I eventually turn all these musings into a book.

4. Protest. Seems like the Seattle thing to do. My feud with Whole Foods rages on, so I think they will be my target despite the association with my current employer. The first time I didn't receive a bag with a handle, I excused it as poor operational efficiency. Little did I know it was part of a grander scheme to remove all handles from bags in the express lanes. I know what you're thinking: don't use the express lanes when your cart has fifty items or bring your own recyclable bags. That's not the point. The point is, if you are going to charge me $5/apple, then I want handles on every side of the bag. I want handles in places I didn't even know there could be handles. Even Walgreens has handles on its bags, but Whole Foods is trying to save fractions of a penny by removing handles in a store location that serves people in downtown Seattle, the majority of whom have to walk back to their homes, cradling their bags as if they were babies. My sign's going to read, "This sign would be a lot more difficult to hold without a handle."

5. Swipe less. Up, down, left, right. I find my phone is often a means to pass idle time in a completely unproductive manner, and while I love a good barstoolsports humiliating video, it adds very little to my life. I think there is something to be said for the ability to be quiet and still, without any sort of stimulation. Plus, I have plenty of thoughts to occupy that time.

6. Create Anna's favorite things. Amazon has a featured section called Oprah's favorite things. How is Oprah's opinion still relevant? In the past twenty years, has no one been able to establish a more credible sense of taste than Oprah? Maybe she was relevant during the cupcake craze of '05, but come on. Even that I find hard to believe, because I could have told you cupcakes were good when I was ten. Then Oprah says, "the ratio of icing to cake is appropriate (duh) and people believe she's discovered something revolutionary."

To her credit, she's clearly very good at branding, and could I do much better? Let's try. Anna's favorite things of 2018:

Jane the Virgin. A melodramatic telenovela that invokes fantasies of beautiful Latin American men.

Magnificent Mrs. Maisel. A smart, fun, empowering Prime original that invokes fantasies of starting my career as a comedian who makes smart quips about dating and corporate America.

Ballers. Sex and the City for men that invokes fantasies of being an athlete.

Okay. Clearly, this is just going to be a list of my Netflix binge queue. I have a newfound respect for Oprah. Maybe she does deserve a magazine with her face on the cover every month. But seriously, how many magazine cover poses does one woman have? New life goal: I begin a magazine called the Dome with a different dome pic every month.

7. Stop telling myself I'm going to floss. I'm not a flosser. I need to accept that.

8. Finally, be brave. I participated in this personal branding workshop at the end of my time at Ross, and you had to choose three words you wanted to described you. Honestly, I forget the other two at the moment, but I remember brave. There are different levels of brave, and honestly, I don't think everything society calls brave is brave. For instance, face planting while attempting a backflip in a conference room could be considered unbridled bravery or utter stupidity - it's all about framing. There are constructive forms of bravery, though. The bravery to discuss taboo topics, to confront your own issues, to create original solutions, to love radically, whether or not that is reciprocated, to trust and hope continually. In a position where it is easy to be comfortable, it is those who are brave enough to choose discomfort that affect growth. Cheers to 2019, y'all! As always, let's kick some ass.

* No, I didn't get tan.