my top 10 decisions of 2024, ranked (1/2)

Annual Deez personal report on the year I tweeted too close to the sun (federal court)

This was the year, as I’ve practiced describing to people, that I started beginning to maybe possibly accept that life is more so Things Happening At You than it is a flawless execution of some kinda random calcified idea about how Things Should Be. All you can do is make some good guesses and call them “decisions.”

Here are the ten most consequential ones from my 2024. Learn from them if you dare!!

10. Tweeting about being on jury duty

In case you missed it: this happened back in April on Eclipse Day. If you don’t have a subscription to the New York Daily News: fret not, The New York Post and The Daily Mail also wrote my humiliation up to read for free, but it was Daily News court reporter John Annese who got the scoop and who also didn’t pull more than one selfie off my Twitter account as illustration—which I learned to appreciate after the Post inserted some particularly foul ones—so NYDN gets the link. (Note: Nevertheless, when a tabloid calls you for comment, text your PR friends before you pick up the phone.)

In our post-Luigi era, I suppose we can all laugh about such inappropriate yet quotidian displays of thirst. But when I look back at this whole ordeal, I still feel idiotic for understanding all too well what neural pathway led me from “wow, to be selected for the jury for a murder trial, pretttttty seriousssss” to “lemme get a tweet off this.” My only excuse is that the jury selection process felt so unserious and specific; the staff and the judge joked around a lot about all the things you could *not* do that day (such as visiting the scene of the crime or talking about the specifics with your family) so I was like okay, well no one’s mentioning anything about social media, so. I remember sitting in the little jury box drafting the copy in my head; that’s how automatic my novel-experience-to-content mechanism has become, apparently.

When they hauled me into the court the next morning to get yelled at by the judge in front of everyone, right before the official proceedings began, I literally thought I was going to shit myself. Like I felt my sphincter flutter a little bit, and I was like, okay I guess here we go.