FOMO Marketplace

on New Year's Resolutions, scrolling, and the emptiness inside

“What’s your new year’s resolution?” a friend asked the other day. I realized I hadn’t really thought about it. I’d burned some thoughts in the fire pit for winter solstice, but new year’s resolutions? My words for last year were commitment and focus, and I felt I’d done alright with those. I stopped waffling between many potential projects and committed to one: working on a book, and I’d been more focused in my writing practice than ever before.

“I don’t know. To finish this book?” I floated. I should come up with something, I thought, a couple words to help guide my year so I’m not just haphazardly blundering into whatever might come.

I’ve been looking for a twin bed for Maya. She’s outgrown her crib, the bars no longer containing her—she routinely crawls out of it at the end of naptime, or early in the morning when she joins us in our bed. I’ve been cruising Facebook Marketplace. Which turns out is not a good place for me. Because I have a problem.

Like social media and online dating before it, Facebook Marketplace brings up all my stuff around FOMO and indecision and the burden of choice. My hopelessness that there are so many options and yet none that I want, until someone else wants it, and then that thing was the thing, the best thing, the only thing, and now I’ll never have it and then… despair.

Whereas the object of my obsession used to be that hot circus performer who was a bartender at my local I then discovered on Tinder, or my friend from college-cum-Sundance director I’d stalk on Instagram until the compare and despair crushed me into a self-hating ball of dust, this time it was a Pottery Barn kids trundle bed with matching bookcase bedside table in Glendale for $100.

I asked the seller dad if it was still available, he said yes. Then, to keep him on the line without committing, I asked a couple harmless time-buying questions:

Does it come with a mattress?

“It can.”

Is it disassembled and ready to go?

“Yes, I just need to scrape off a few unicorn stickers.”

I felt the ball in my court. Was I going to make a decision, offer to meet up, see if there was chemistry in person…

I stalled out. Did we even want a trundle? Maybe we would prefer under bed storage instead. Was this the one, or somewhere out there was there something better? I showed it to Stevie, he wasn’t sure either. He wasn’t in a rush. He’s not a thirsty bitch like me. I respect this about Stevie, usually, but this time it wasn’t helpful.

Twenty four hours later, I thought I should probably respond to seller dad’s unicorn sticker comment.

“Relatable!” I said. Then, “I think we’re moving away from the trundle idea, but thanks anyway!” How often was Maya going to have sleepovers anyway? Did we really need a trundle? Couldn’t we just set up the Ex-Ped if she had a friend over?

But then I showed it to Stevie again and we both decided in that moment that we should take it. It was only $100 and that bedside table was so cute.

“Sorry for waffling,” I added to my unanswered comment. “I’ve talked to my husband and I think we are still interested in this bed if it’s still available.” Seller dad never responded. Within a minute, the bed was marked Sold. It was gone, to someone else. And then, the ache. So familiar from my days of chatting to guys on apps—I let another one slip through my fingers, what if he was the one, and I only knew it once he was gone, chosen by somebody else? I felt deeply, irrationally sad.

(A black widow spider I found on the bottom of the stroller I sold on Facebook Marketplace; I thought it would be funny to include this picture in the listing, but ultimately didn’t, just as you wouldn’t put a picture of your pimple on a dating profile)

“It was perfect,” I told Stevie.

“Actually, it wasn’t. You only think it was now that it’s gone.”

“It’s so sad.”

He laughed.

“It’s actually not sad at all.” There were a lot of things that were sad in the world. And this wasn’t one of them.

“You’re trying to fill the emptiness inside,” he said. “It’s not about the bed.”

Of course I knew it wasn’t about the bed, just as I’d known it wasn’t about the hot circus performer who never texted back. But still, I obsessed. Over the lost bed. Returning to the post over and over as I’d returned to his profile, wondering what happened, what could I have done differently. It could’ve been mine, why didn’t I want it when I had the chance? Why was it only now that it was gone that I could see what had been obvious all along: that that bedside table was the sweetest thing in the world. And I wanted it, seemingly more than I’d ever wanted anything. I started frantically searching to find the exact same bed and frame + bedside table, and trundle that I now decided I had to have. I found one that was almost the same and my heart leaped. “Pottery, Barn with a knight (sic) table” no trundle and it was $350, but I would have to compromise now, I knew that. It said OBO so I planned to offer $250 once I had him on the hook. I reached out saying, in so many words:

Me! Over here! Pick me!

“I want it, I can come get it tomorrow!” I saw that he’d seen my message and waited. Was I being too desperate?

“Is the set still available?” I asked then, trying to be cool.

“Sorry was selling this for a friend who failed to tell me they sold it already.” What a cold, harsh world this was proving to be. I clearly wasn’t cut out for it.

“I’ll do it,” Stevie said, noticing what was happening to me. “You shouldn’t go on Marketplace anymore.” At first I felt relieved by his offer.

“Really? Thank you!” But then I found I couldn’t stay off it. I spent longer on the toilet than I needed to, scrolling in secret, Stevie catching me and prying my phone out of my gnarled claws.

“The what if is killing me,” I groaned, in a nostalgic relapse that had me looking again at the lost bed.

“You mean if we had the bed, our life would be perfect?” he laughed, strumming his ukulele.

I thought back to the last time I could remember being like this. It was the last time I’d been on Instagram, when I’d happened upon something someone else had that made me feel bad about myself. It was the reason I’d deleted Instagram, the reason I’d ultimately gotten off the dating apps and decided I’d meet my person in real life. Desperate painful obsession followed by a period of clarity when I replaced time- and soul-sucking scrolling and swiping with practices that nourished my inner life. When I opened myself to the mystery and magic and fostered my connection to others that way, rather than with time spent on my phone.

Maybe another such time is upon me, I’m realizing now. It’s no coincidence that those who practice intentionality with how they live their daily lives tend to start their day with meditation or exercise rather than Instagram, and that these same people tend not to drink alcohol or eat much sugar or stay up late watching TV. Trying to maintain a sense of ease and evenness rather than bopping from one dopamine hit to the next. I’m not saying I want to be a monk. I love chocolate and a good martini, I’m enjoying that hot gay hockey show just as much as the next person. But I also want to feel good when I wake up in the morning. My tolerance for doing things that make me feel bad is getting less as I get older. So I guess my word for 2026 is

“Discipline,” Stevie says, giving me a smug look. Ugh, fine. Discipline. It’s discipline.