How to Spend New Year's Eve by Yourself

Unless you’re the type who enjoys choking back a sob, lighting a single candle in a stale chocolate cupcake, and crying yourself to sleep as you listen to the sounds of noisemakers outside your window, odds are you’re dreading spending New Year’s Eve by yourself. But if you think of this night as no different from any other night (except perhaps a bit longer and louder), you can make it through just fine. Here’s how to go about it.

Instructions

Difficulty: Easy

1. Have a normal dinner. The first step to treating New Year’s Eve like any other night is to have supper at your usual hour. Because restaurants are preoccupied with revelers, it’s probably not a good idea to order in (unless you want to wait unusually long for your meal to arrive). Do a little planning ahead of time, and have all the fixings for your meal available in your fridge.
2. Watch something good on TV. Unlike Christmas Eve, the TV programming on New Year’s Eve is fairly normal until 11 PM or so. Watch the shows you would normally watch. Avoid anything with a New Year’s theme. That would probably make you feel worse--unless it’s a show that makes fun of New Year’s Eve and the kind of people who celebrate it. In that case, go right ahead.
3. Drink in moderation. If you’re the type who likes to nurse an after-dinner brandy, or enjoys a nice glass of Zinfandel with dinner, do that. There’s no reason to power-chug a six-pack of Dos Equis in a bootless attempt to tune in the New Year’s vibe. If you must get drunk, get drunk for the right reasons: because you feel like it, not because society demands it of you on December 31st.
4. Don’t wait up if you don’t feel like it. Despite what you may have been told, there is no clause in the U.S. Constitution stating that you must stay up until midnight on New Year’s Eve. If your normal bedtime is 11 PM, go to bed at 11 PM. By midnight, you’ll be so sound asleep that any stray cheering is unlikely to wake you up. If there’s a party next door, try to read something good until the revelers go home.
5. Don’t pay too much attention to the date. Remember, it’s a historical trick of the calendar that we celebrate New Year’s Day in the middle of winter. If it weren’t for some obscure Roman emperor two thousand years ago, we’d be throwing our New Year’s Eve parties in the spring, when you’d be in a much better mood.