I'm writing a diary about my year of giving up, although I may give up on this too. Who knows? You can read about why I'm giving up here, and my first week of saying fuck it here. Further disclosure: the term "week" is used loosely.

On December 31, 2021, I spent the day in bed. It was cold and dark in Los Angeles, as if the final day of 2021 was the last bag of groceries you have to bring in from the car. I just couldn't do it.

Fish didn't get a walk, and I ate leftovers mindlessly out of the refrigerator. I felt bad about this, but tried to remind myself that I had made a vow to give up, stop striving. Eating leftover turkey meatloaf in my sweats aligned with this goal.

On January 1, 2022 I had a lapse: I went on a date. I promised myself not to do this anymore, because I have an increasingly calcified belief that I am too old, too jowly, too chubby to find anyone. And then if I did find anyone, Fish would just make sure they could never sleep over anyway, if my snoring didn't scare them away first.

I'd like to say that I don't know why I went, but I do know why. I had an episode of magical thinking, I had a delusion that all signs pointed to some otherworldly force pushing me to go. The date in question was a long-haired professor of music ethnography, and I just can't resist that shit. I can't resist the intersection between art and academia, I can't resist a beard, I can't resist a guy in a band. And this kicked off an episode of batshit magical thinking.

I was in my pajamas when he suggested we meet. I thought about saying no because once in pajamas for the night, I am in pajamas for the night. I thought about saying no because of my new resolution — was I really going to break it on Day 1? But he teaches in a city north of Los Angeles, and was only in town for a bit, and was currently ten minutes away from me. And this sent me over the magical-thinking edge: he's ten minutes away, that never happens in Los Angeles; it must be a sign.

I have a lot of disdain for magical thinkers. I don't think "the Universe" brings things to us, I don't think we manifest outcomes, I don't think there are signs, and yet I can't stop falling into the magical thinking trap. Recently, I almost let my bar membership lapse because I somehow didn't get a renewal notice. I logged on to the state bar website only because my insurance agent needed my license number. Once on the site, I was confronted with a big red warning sign, and this immediately sent me into a magical thinking tailspin: If I wasn't taking care of my mother's car insurance, I would have never logged on to the site and seen this, therefore someone must be looking out for me and made sure I had to take care of the insurance so that I wouldn't let my bar license lapse.

This is so asinine. It's ridiculous. But the brain wants what the brain wants. The brain wants to make sense of a series of random events, and I don't underestimate the power of this desire. We wouldn't have mythology, statistics and religion without it.

So when the hot long-haired professor said we should get a drink, my brain went into overdrive, crafting a narrative that went something like this, "as soon as she decided to give up, she met The One." This is so basic bitch, so rom-com, so formulaic, I want to slap myself. I pride myself on not being these things, of being aware of the perils of engaging in romantic fantasy. I don't think it's a coincidence that all the books we read in high school warned us of this: Anna Karenina threw herself on the train tracks and Madame Bovary drank arsenic after being total idiots about love, and the fallacy that it can change your station. Lily Bart died penniless after rejecting men she thought were beneath her, magically thinking that someone better was just around the corner.

But like them, I'm weak. My brain is held hostage by Hallmark movie tropes, even though I don't watch Hallmark movies. (Is this the definition of osmosis?) So I got out of my pajamas — a surprisingly glamorous sleep set from Old Navy — put on a push-up bra and lip gloss, and went to meet the hot professor.

It was fine; he was cute and smart. He did mansplain the term "hegemony" to me, but I'm beginning to think that men just can't help themselves? There must be something in the Y chromosome that makes them want to shoot things and explain things. I just batted my fake eyelashes and pretended that I was getting new information. But despite successfully suppressing the urge to scream that I fucking know what "hegemony" means, in the end it was clear he wasn't interested.

I'm taking it kinda hard. Not because I thought he was The One and I've missed out on some great love, but because it confirms all the things I know to be true: I am too old, too jowly, too fat. I know I give good conversation; he made it clear that he had been craving a smart conversation for awhile. (Although perhaps I said something disqualifying?) So by a process of elimination, his lack of interest could only be chalked up to my looks. It's called science.

And I'm mad at myself because I knew these things to be true before I got out of bed and started froufing; I knew them so deeply that I had crafted a whole new life plan around these facts. But I ignored what I know to be true, and made a play for it anyway, like the fat kid trying to throw a pass during P.E. I already had a note from my teacher that I could stay off the court, so why did I even try?

My working theory is that like the human instinct for survival, the human instinct to hope really does need to be beaten out of us. Prisoners hold out hope for a win on appeal, even though the chances of that happening are infinitesimal. But how do I beat hope out of me? I wish I knew. Law school beat the artist out of me, so there must be a way.

More confusingly, my episodes of magical thinking go the other way too. The Bumble app makes the same be-de-beep notification noise that food delivery apps make, and Fish therefore flips out every time he hears it. He's a wreck, but smart, and figured out that a few minutes after hearing the be-de-beep sound from a food delivery app, someone shows up at our door. So if someone messages me on Bumble, it be-de-beeps, Fish leaps off the bed and runs to the door growling and barking, expecting a stranger to be there any minute.

I know what you're thinking: turn off notifications for the Bumble app, and the problem is solved. The thing is, I did that. First I turned off sounds, but they kept happening anyway. Then I turned off notifications altogether, and they kept happening anyway.

When I figured out there was a ghost in the machine that wasn't going to let me turn these things off, and I was therefore torturing my dog (or more accurately, still torturing my dog), I engaged in another round of magical thinking, that went something like this: Fish, who based on most metrics is the wrong dog for me, was sent to me to save me from dating, from having to navigate the feelings surrounding my diminishing looks, and my increasing invisibility as I age.

Nuts. Truly nuts. I have Fish because I picked him up from an animal shelter on impulse during the throes of grief for my shepherd who had passed away suddenly. He isn't some sentry sent from "the Universe" to save me from myself.

But the good news is that despite ricocheting between two opposing episodes of magical thinking, I'm (probably) still fundamentally sane because I am annoyed at myself for being insane. (Please, as soon as you see something in this space in which I start claiming that something was "meant to be" or that "the Universe" sent me something or saved me from something, send help). I also thankfully came back to reality yesterday, after having a beautiful day with Fish and my friend Nancy in the desert. Nancy and I went to Agua Dulce to look at horse property, in an effort to turn the fantasy of a coven of cat ladies living together on one large property into a reality. In addition to enough room for horses and chickens and dogs and bunnies, the property had a huge art studio (or what I decided was a art studio), and I had visions of getting back to all the things that made me the former, better me: art, nature, horses.

Then we went to visit Vasquez Rocks, which are "famous rocks" and that makes me laugh. It was colder than I ever remember California. The desert blew Fish's little mind; he zigzagged around, smelling sage, his little nostrils puffing winter air. We took photos in the afternoon light and then Fish dragged us back to the warm car. It was magical, and luckily real. No insanity required.

If you want to spend your one wild and precious life reading unlimited Medium articles, you can sign up here.