Girl Furiously Scribbling in Moleskine Desperate to be Asked About New Year’s Resolution

By Maya Lavender

Last Wednesday, I witnessed something quite peculiar in New Kline. Upon entering, the aura of the room was off but in a different way than usual. Nevertheless, I got some food and sat down at a seat by the window. Somehow, over the din of the lunch rush and the podcast pumping from my airpods, I could hear what sounded like a ballpoint pen scratching on paper. I tried to tune it out, but it grew louder. And then, there was the unmistakable sound of notebook pages turning and frustrated sighing. I took out my left pod and looked around to see a young woman headed determinedly for the podium.

A hush fell over the room as she proclaimed the following, with a most crazed look in her eye: “I have not been journaling this loudly for no one to ask me about my New Year’s resolutions!!!” These words, spoken with the audacity of a thousand men who have never been told to stop it, will haunt me for the rest of my days. Her mouth was pressed so closely to the microphone that the feedback reverberated throughout the space with suffocating force. I was compelled to follow her back to her seat as she went to return to her journaling.

I sat down across from her, and was confronted with the most incredible sight. One Moleskine notebook. Scores of pens and dozens of stamps, along with a wide array of stickers and rolls of washi tape, all pouring out of a bright yellow Kånken backpack. Amidst the rubble, the young woman sipped black coffee out of a kitschy llama-shaped mug. She winced with every sip, as if she was drinking straight vodka. I peered across the table to see what she was writing and was confronted with the following statement, written in brush-pen calligraphy:

Upon seeing this, I was so afraid that I instantly stood up, knocking over my chair in the process. I have not returned to Kline, lest I am confronted with that unhinged display of self-care once again. But I’m not truly free from her clutches. Every night she comes to me in my dreams to update me on her resolutions, condescendingly asking me about the progress I’ve made towards my own. I have peace no longer.