Welcome to 2025, which is starting in earnest with good things–Games Done Quick!--and less good things–the US certifying election results, ushering in whatever the next four years of our lives are going to be. Let’s drag our heels a little longer by reflecting on the glory of the timeless sprawl of winter break.
My break was pretty OK– I went to visit my parents in Florida for the first time since they moved there many years ago. For obvious reasons I wasn’t that psyched to go, but the trip was mostly good. They live in a weird golfing complex, which makes my dad happy and gave me the opportunity to spy on golfers and remember how much I don’t like golf. My sister took me and my youngest niece and nephew to the Everglades, where we saw so many terrifying alligators and also some cool birds. My parents have a giant TV that is positively cursed with motion smoothing; I smugly said “Oh, I can fix this for you,” only for them to not be able to find the remote that would allow me to do so. I have failed in my duty as an ostensibly tech-savvy kid.
I also spent some time with my sister’s family in South Carolina, where she lives on a farm full of horses, who let me pet them, and also goats, who for some inexplicable reason I want to pick up and cradle like babies but who mostly ran away to mockingly have goat fun where I couldn’t get to them.
Because I was away, I didn’t get to play as many games as I meant to, though I did start a new run in my favorite game, The Long Dark, instead of doing the more professionally responsible thing of playing more Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. But I did read a lot of books on my travels: a book about NXIVM, an academic book about Heaven’s Gate, The Rich People Have Gone Away (wasn’t as into it as I was hoping to be from reviews), and half of Come and Get It, which I’m digging.
And now we’re all back to work and ready (or not) for whatever a new year will bring. What did you get up to? How’s your 2025 feeling so far?
