I drafted this shit before new years, and that’s all come and gone now, but better late than never right? I have to say, in general 2020 was a great year for me. There was plenty of anxiety during the initial lockdowns that I may not have a job coming out the other end, but somehow we pulled through, even taking on staff from our dead competitors. I’ve been told print is dead for the entire decade I’ve been working in it. I have to admit, working in a corpse has been a pretty good gig these last few years.

Of course, 2020 has been pretty terrible for most of the planet, but when has the rest of the planets misery ever stopped us from enjoying ourselves? Just because this time it’s affecting people who use Twitter? But seriously, the varied Covid responses from less fortunate third world countries like America have resulted in thousands of preventable deaths. Man it sure is good I wrote all this down here. Where else would you be able to get this information??

Christmas went well, and it’s one of the first Christmases I was actually buzzed for. I got all festive and shit a month out and everything. Malls still got festive slightly before I decided to, which is just the laws of corporate thermodynamics at work. They thirst for the day everyone’s obligated to buy each other stuff. Personally I’m still a proponent for Christmas being entirely food based. Let’s just eat and have a great time. Adding gift giving is like ruining a perfectly good party with costumes.

Talking about ruining perfectly good parties. I sent out 2020 in awkwardness. I famously call everyone dude, bro, and man, regardless of whether they have a penis or not. Early in our relationship as Becky was sailing through an intersection into a street that’s immediately barred and gated after the set of lights I’ve been famously quoted as saying “Dude. DUDE BRO BABE, NOOOO.”

This is important to the story, to understand who I am, to contextualize how I’m about to look. New Years eve, I’m hanging out with a brand new set of friends, most of which I’m never going to see again. One of which is a trans chick, she’s pretty cool. We’re playing Mario Kart, she says something I say “Yeah man!” oops, well no harm no foul right “YEAH MAN” I say again. Motherfucker! Everyone else in the group has gone quiet. Thanks guys. I’m overdoing it on the dudes and mans because I want to act as genial as possible. But now it just sounds like I’m misgendering her. Becky leans over to grab her drink and hisses into my ear “stop calling her man!” “I’m trying!” I say, horrified.

Later in the night I’m overthinking it and manage to cut myself short on the third pass “Yeah Maaauuuhh-“. I try and find a diplomatic way to show her that I’m not attempting to misgender anybody. However the issue with pronouns is that their all in the third person. And talking about somebody in the third person in front of their fucking face is even ruder. So what I’m really trying to say is, virtue signaling is way harder than it sounds. She was cool about it though.

One last thing I’d like to leave you with this year is this chiptune set by Mark Sparling, who you may know for his amazing work he did on A Short Hike’s music, which is consequently my second best game of 2020.