The Things That Got Me Through 2020
Say it with me: This year has been garbage. Trash. The absolute worst. Terrible, no good, very bad. Historically awful. It can go to hell.
This has been the year we’ve been cooped up indoors, actively paid not to go to work, keeping two metres away from friends and family right when we want to bring them in for a hug, and dealing with the cancellation of everything from football to Eurovision to Christmas.
Usually I grace my Twitter followers with an end-of-year thread of my favourite pop culture; frankly, this year my brain has been too scrambled to easily think of lists of top games, TV shows, albums, and films.
Instead, I want to do something a little different; I want to take some time to reflect on what got me through the slow, agonising, exhausting march history will remember as 2020. I hope that wherever you are, you have a peaceful, relaxing Christmas and New Year.
Green Spaces
It’s been nine months since I’ve been legally able to let a friend into my home.
I live in Leicester, which this year had the dubious honour of being the first British city to go into local lockdown. While other parts of the UK got to go to the pub or get their hair cut, we spent another month trapped indoors, and another four months trapped under severe restrictions; we could only start letting friends into household gardens two weeks before England went into a second national lockdown.
Despite this, I’ve felt lucky to call Leicester my home. I probably spent more time in the city’s parks and green spaces this year than I did since I moved here, with Abbey Park being the site of summer hangouts, my birthday party, and endless duck photography.
Don’t get me wrong, I miss Leicester’s incredible independent pubs, bars, and venues, and I can’t wait to be back at those when the vaccine rolls out and restrictions ease. But places like Abbey Park have been a huge lifeline this year, and I’m going to value them so much more in the future.
Animal Crossing: New Horizons
Nintendo has a knack for making Animal Crossing games come out at significant moments in my life. Back in 2013, I got New Leaf on its release day; that was the day I took my last A-Level exam, at the start of a summer that marked my transition from secondary school to university.
This time, Nintendo hit an extraordinary stroke of luck; it released New Horizons three days before the start of our lockdown, and two days into a two-week period of self-isolation for my partner and I.
That first month or two of New Horizons’ launch fitted perfectly into our new quarantine era; it became a social platform, a form of escape, and a neat little crafting project all wrapped up into one. I revelled in crafting a peaceful little island for my anthropromorphic animal chums, taking friends around my newly-crafted shopping district, and finding sweet little moments where my two duck islanders fished side-by-side.
New Horizons was the perfect antidote to 2020, a peaceful island idyll in a time when the world around us was falling apart. It wasn’t just one of the best games of the year, it was the best destination of the year.
Xbox Game Pass Ultimate
Of all the subscription services I found myself signed up to this year, Game Pass has by far been the best. I spent most of my evenings in the first lockdown playing Halo: The Master Chief Collection with my Dad; this was the first time we’d played co-op together this extensively for about a decade.
When Dad got hold of his own Game Pass subscription, I took advantage of Game Pass for PC and the ability to share my console membership with my partner to spend some time pirate cosplaying in Sea of Thieves, the three of us doing our best to navigate the choppy seas and winding up in hurdy-gurdy duets.
It’s introduced me to so many great games this year, from the incredible, accessible Celeste (played between my phone and PC, thanks to Microsoft’s new cloud gaming service) to the groundbreaking representation of Tell Me Why.
It’s been a banner year for games, and while Game Pass hasn’t been a one-stop shop, it’s been the best way to bring my friends and family together.
Event Television
The weirdest thing about 2020 is that I felt weirdly emotional at the final of Strictly Come Dancing, and I don’t even think I’m the only person in the country to feel that way.
While music festivals, sporting occasions, and the endless march of the Marvel Cinematic Universe all ground to a halt this year, the kind of TV we’d all gather round our screens (and Twitter) to watch reigned supreme.
Shows like Strictly and The Great British Bake Off — which kicked off by lampooning the Prime Minister’s inconsistent Covid messaging moments after an address from Boris Johnson himself — didn’t really change their formulas save for the odd contestant bubble, but drew bigger audiences than previous years.
Of course, that’s mostly because more of us didn’t really have a choice to do anything other than curl up and watch the TV on our evenings, but these shows also did something few other things could: they made things feel normal.
In a year where nothing has felt normal, watching some talented strangers bake terrible celebrity caricatures or seeing Bill Bailey storm to the glitterball trophy felt like a warm hug from a friend who’s painfully out of our grasp right now.
Discord, Zoom, and TeleParty
Rather than rambling about how these platforms are great (they’re mostly not!), I want to share a few personal experiences with each.
Discord
In the absence of an actual Eurovision Song Contest this year, I did the kind of flamboyantly extra thing only Eurovision fans could do: I made a Discord Eurovision. I dragged a few friends into a Discord server, played them 26 entries from the year’s contest in a randomly-generated order, and had them, each playing individual countries, give points to their winners (Iceland won, of course.)
It will never properly substitute for an actual Eurovision Song Contest, with its dubious outfits, strange song choices, and endlessly contentious voting, but honestly, LARPing Eurovision was a great deal of fun. I’m itching to do it again.
Zoom
As much as I’ve fallen in love with Working from Home, it’s been Zoom that has kept me sane while doing so. Hopping on to meetings with my colleagues has been the thing that’s kept me going, knowing we’re all dealing with the same frustrations and having a few minutes to have a laugh.
Honestly, though, my favourite Zoom thing was hosting Virtual Tea Breaks. The idea was simple: bring one person from every team in my workplace on to Zoom for an agenda-free natter over a cup of tea.
It was so nice to see faces I hadn’t seen at work for months and just check in on how they were — from colleagues who were still in the socially-distanced office to those who were dealing with parenting and educating in the middle of national school closures.
TeleParty
Honestly, using The Extension Formerly Known As Netflix Party to finally watch Neon Genesis Evangelion with my friends has been a highlight, even if clashing schedules has meant it’s been less regular than we’d all like.
My Partner, Friends, and Family
I’m so grateful for them this year, for so many different reasons I probably don’t want to deep dive on here, so I’ll keep it brief.
Shout out to Spenser, Dad, Jan, Loz, Reece, Cory, Lex, Simon, Sam, Luke, Jacob, Jon, Oscar, Rain, Morgan, Ellie, and the many others I probably haven’t written down — y’all know who you are!! — for making this insufferable year so much better.
From tabletop RPGs to six-hour Discord calls to checking in on me right when I’ve needed it the most, you’ve all made my life better. I miss you all a ton. Here’s to next year, and the idea of a social gathering not being a superspreader event.
