Remember back in January before the pandemic started when we were all full of hope and aspiration for a new year and a new decade that couldn't possibly be worse than the ones before them?
Boy, that all aged like a gallon of milk sitting in the summer sun, didn't it?
But perhaps nobody's early 2020 optimism was a bigger face-plant than comedian Robyn Schall. She's gone mega-viral in recent days after finding her deeply hilarious, profoundly tragic list of 2020 goals.
Schall posted a video to TikTok of her reading the December 2019 list and even she can't breathe from laughing so hard at the tragedy.
Schall—a New York-based stand-up comedian who like many in the arts has been locked up in her tiny studio apartment most of the year instead of out performing—came across the list while going through old comedy notebooks.
She told BuzzFeed News she began laughing as soon as she started reading because the goals list included basically every genre of pandemic-year tragedy.
As she put it in her video:
"Alright. Goal one: Make more money. I, you know, have been unemployed since March."
Schall then continued with three goals that were functionally impossible in 2020.
" Travel more. Lose weight. Be more social."
And it only got more hilariously sad from there.
"I wrote 'cry less'! I've cried every single day of this whole pandemic!"
Who among us‽‽
But nothing could compare to the final goal which she read while laughing so hard she could barely get the words out.
"It's not funny, but I wrote, 'Spend more time with my grandma,' and she died!"
Speaking with BuzzFeed, Schall explained what had her laughing so hard—through tears—about the list.
"Everything on the list is just so funny because it's everything taken away from us...
"The universe was like, No, we're not gonna give you travel or success. Oh, you want some time with your grandma? We're gonna knock out all old people!"
She called the list "comically heartbreaking," a sentiment that definitely resonated with others on the internet.
Her video has gone mega-viral on TikTok, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.
Perhaps best of all, Schall's video has given her horrible year a happy ending (or, at least, as happy as one can hope for in 2020). She's become internet pals with celebrities who've reached out to her in her DMs, been featured on talk shows and has boosted her social media profile—an important tool for comedians nowadays.
Of course, she'll have to wait until the pandemic is over to put all that to any use, which... well, only makes sense for this nightmare of a year.
Schall herself acknowledged:
"It's so 2020 that celebrities want to get a drink with me and we can't go out. I get my big break and I can't do anything!"
Well, there's always 2021... or 2022...
@kileywrestling/Bluesky