Everything Is Fine

Category: Life

This category is basically just for “stuff I do” – basically the most “blog” of categories.

  • Gen Con 2026 was fine – Part III – Extracurriculars (feat. TORNADO)

    Third (and probably final, but we’ll see) post about this year’s Gen Con. First is here. Second is here.

    In addition to the travel and the various “sanctioned” events, there’s also just other stuff that goes on at Gen Con. This year, though, I didn’t really get up to much of that.

    There’s the exhibit hall, where most of the vendors are. I did buy a couple of games: I bought Hell of a Deal by Smirk and Dagger. (Haven’t played it yet.) I bought Jibber Jabble by AllPlay. (It was $9. I had played it the previous evening with some folks and it was a riot. It’s a tremendously stupid game that you should try.) I picked up my pre-ordered expansion for Lunar Rush (a game that debuted at Gen Con 2024 that I didn’t bother with, then I bought used at the consignment store in 2025).

    I also sold a Riftbound card. I don’t really play Riftbound, but I still would like to, and I opened a valuable card earlier this year at a pre-rift event. I got a good amount of cash for it that I’ll probably just gamble with. It’s fine.

    Otherwise, I didn’t do a ton in the hall. I walked around a little, but nothing jumped out at me as exciting or anything. I did see a demo of a game that had some neat mechanics and really cool looking components, but then they said it was a future kickstarter (not like on kickstarter now and they’re demoing to get backers – something they’re going to put on kickstarter eventually). Whatever. Then I turned around and realized I was right by the booth that had the Laundry Files RPG books. I didn’t buy them, but it was neat to just sort of stumble on them like that. I almost bought them. The Deluxe Edition of The Gang sold out every day.

    I didn’t go into the consignment store at all. I was pretty booked with events during store hours most days, and it’s pretty out of the way. Oh well.

    I did go to the auction briefly. Well, I meant to go briefly. I wanted to get food on Saturday and it was raining very hard outside, so instead I took a skywalk to the auction. It was TOVA, after all, when all the weird shit goes up for sale. Then, while I was there, Indianapolis got a Tornado Warning. (Yeah, a Warning, meaning OH SHIT TORNADO.)

    This warning didn’t exactly mean “THERE IS A TORNADO COMING NOW” but there were very ominous signs on radar bearing down right on center city Indianapolis, so taking some shelter was still probably a good idea. There were parts of the convention center where it rained inside, and some hotels, restaurants, and parking garages started flooding. (That’s why my garage being aboveground was fortuitous.)

    The ballroom hosting the auction, while not downstairs, was away from windows and could be sealed off from the corridors and stuff, and so due to the volume of people, it was deemed the safest place to be. So not only did the auction proceed, but people in the hallways and other nearby rooms were brought in. MANDATORY AUCTION TIME. I joked that now TOVA means Tornado Outside? Visit Auction!

    Anyway, it was fine. And not just because of the bit, but it actually was fine. There was little to no actual tornado (I believe an EF0 was confirmed elsewhere in the city) and as far as I know, no convention casualties occurred. (I’m sure there are people dealing with car insurance due to flooded garages and stuff, but that stuff happens.)

    Another Gen Con in the books – different from the 12 others I’ve attended but also kinda the same. New stuff but also nothing new. The most excitement probably occurred for me during an evening game of Hot Streak. Just a bunch of nerds around a table screaming for a hot dog and a bear racing each other. (Oh, and every time I got to spring something weird on the Call of Cthulhu players. Looking forward to doing that again.)

    The games were fine. The events were fine. The tornado was fine. Buc-ee’s was fine. Gen Con was fine. Next year will be number 60. Wanna guess how that’ll be?

  • Gen Con 2026 was fine – Part II – The Events

    The second post of approximately three about Gen Con 2026. First is here if you haven’t seen it: https://everythingisfine.fyi/2026/08/11/gen-con-2026-was-fine-part-i-the-trip/

    So what did I actually do at Gen Con this year? Somehow simultaneously a lot and also nothing. Here’s a quick rundown of official stuff I did:

    • Franchi$e – an upcoming sports management deckbuilder (it was billed as a deckbuilder, but it’s not – the designer has since updated the tagline for when their funding goes live). It was an entertaining enough game. I’m probably not going to buy it, but I had a good time playing it and would play it with friends if they had a copy. (It had a lot of Lords of Baseball in it, which I liked a lot when I first tried it, and like a little less now but it’s still enjoyable and I’ve hardly played it.)
    • Above and Below: Haunted – It’s the old worker placement/adventuring game Above and Below, but a sequel of sorts with ghosts. Enjoyable to play. Would play it again, but not a lot, but it has more variability in it than the original.
    • Kinfire Delve – I’d actually played this before (Chris Grace taught me how to play at Clocktower Con 2025, so I’m kind of a big deal) so I decided to jump into a session of it where you could win prizes completing in-game challenges. I ended up playing with a family. We were able to beat the hardest boss in the game and complete all the challenges we set out to do, except for the ones based on completing the game quickly. (I think we would have won a grand prize if we would have finished in 45 minutes; we took closer to an hour.) Good game – I’ve thought about buying it, and I still might in the future.
    • Mighty Shot! – A silly little game that tries to play kind of like a MOBA in that you summon minions and march them up a board to damage your opponent, and your opponent uses abilities to try to kill them. (And vice versa.) The core gimmick is that, to kill minions, you flick pucks at a target printed on a special playmat. (The target kind of looks like a curling house; flicking the pucks felt very Crokinole-like.) It was surprisingly complicated, but started coming together pretty quickly. I wouldn’t buy it, but I’d play it more.
    • Surviving the GAME: Was billed as a sort of tactical shooter deckbuilder. Host never showed; game never happened.
    • Laundry Files RPG Session: I like the Charles Stross novel series, and none of the Call of Cthulhu sessions being run by the group I usually look for sounded interesting, so I went for this instead. It was a very basic scenario, but it showcased how the system works and was a good illustration of the novels’ universe as an RPG. I’ll look into sessions in the future. Maybe I’ll buy the books, but I already have enough RPG books for games I’ll never actually play.
    • True Dungeon: A friend needed some people to fill out a group, so I tagged along. I did True Dungeon once before, and it was fine. This time, it was also fine. They’ve shortened the runs from seven rooms to five in order to lower the ticket prices. Five isn’t really long enough, but I’ll certainly never pay the hundred-and-whatever dollars the seven room version costs. (Honestly, I wouldn’t pay the eighty-whatever for the five room one, either.) Entertaining, but I can find lots of things that are entertaining for that kind of money. Maybe a board game? I wonder if I can get any of those somewhere?

    This year I also did something I’ve never done before at Gen Con – I GMed two games. First, a session of the Root RPG, where the adventure is meant to parallel the novel Mossflower in the Redwall series. (I knew little to nothing about the Root RPT, Redwall, or Mossflower going in.) It was a good time; the players seemed to enjoy the adventure and it went better than I would have thought. Second (and last – these two events were my actual first and last events of the con), a Call of Cthulhu adventure taking place in a dilapidated, haunted, eldritch Appalachian folklore-based theme park. I had a blast here, and I think my players did, too. Lots of great moments, both from the story itself and the way the players interacted with it. Both were good times. Would GM again.

    No stage combat classes, though. And no mega games, or burlesque shows, or Blood on the Clocktower. (Since my con friends generally don’t want to play, I should start getting into the random hallway games, but weird strangers…)

    And the vibes were good. Last year, I had a fantastic time in events, but moving from thing to thing felt like a drag. This year, the events were fine to good. Nothing mind-blowing, but still always enjoyable, and moving around the space felt pleasant.

  • Gen Con 2026 was fine – Part I – The Trip

    Gen Con was last weekend! So why am I just writing about it now? Because I couldn’t be bothered. When you have lukewarm takes like these, sometimes you just aren’t that interested in vomiting them forth for approximately zero people to read.

    Anyway, this will be a series of posts (approximately three) about Gen Con 2026 – the travel, the events, the shenanigans, etc. This one will mainly cover the travel.

    Travel to Gen Con is boring. At least, it’s boring when you drive from the Midatlantic, because you just get on Interstate 70 and then nothing happens. (Depending on where you get on Interstate 70, you might go through Breezewood!) There were a few notable things, though (or notable lack of things for the first one):

    Nobody’s transmission exploded! I mean, I’m sure somebody’s did, but it wasn’t mine or the one of anyone else I know. That meant that once I was actually on the road, it was smooth sailing. The only stop was near Ohio Valley Mall in Ohio for gas and food, and then to wonderful downtown Indianapolis.

    Downtown Indianapolis is fine, but there is a lot of construction going on there at the moment. Specifically, the block in front of the Sheraton hotel is under construction, as well as various blocks nearby around the city. This meant that I could not put my car in front of the building to unload it, and also that it took roughly 20 minutes to circle around the block to pull into the parking garage because the streets are all one way and the garage is on the wrong side of the hotel to be able to pull in after stopping at the front door. (I did not park in the hotel’s garage, granted – they charge $55 per day for that and the convention affords better uses of money.)

    But once the car was unloaded and stowed, I didn’t need to bother with it again until the end of the convention. It was safely indoors and above ground (which all became relevant on Saturday) and was waiting for me to load it back up and make the trip the other direction.

    As for the hotel – the Indianapolis Sheraton is fine. I’ve now stayed there at least three times for Gen Con and while it’s farther from everything than I’d like, it’s near some good food and walking from there to the con helped me find Jack’s Donuts, which is quite good. (And water didn’t pour in to their downstairs conference rooms. Or at least, if it didn’t, I wasn’t aware of it. Water did pour in other places though – more on that later.)

    I’ve said this before, but not on here – the drive from the east coast (and specifically the Midatlantic) to the Midwest has one big hurdle – the Appalachian Mountains. There are only so many routes across them. From Northern Virginia, you can drive up to Frederick, Maryland and get right on I-70, or you can drive out west on I-66, then pick up I-81 and take that up to I-70. You can either just take I-70, diverting up into Pennsylvania (to Breezewood!) then paying like $9 for the Turnpike, then a segment of the interstate that is specifically described as not up to interstate standards, and then getting into West Virginia and onward. On the other hand, you can divert from I-70 onto I-68, which is a straight shot right across Maryland, passing the future site of Noah’s Ark (that broke ground 50 years ago, but they’re gonna finish it!)… right up until it just sort of terminates in Morgantown, West Virginia. You can take US-40 to get from 68 to 70, climbing the mountains through Uniontown, or you can get on I-79 in Morgantown, spending a significant portion of time going north instead of west toward the destination.

    Anyway, all that’s to say that the eastern end of the trip has a lot of hurdles. It’s a lot of slow going and not a lot of progress. It looks lovely, though. Going to Gen Con, that’s the beginning of the trip. You get some scenic views and crummy roads and a lot of up and down (I’m a little surprised my transmission hasn’t exploded, considering it’s already basically defective) but convention energy gets you going and you make it over the mountains and it’s a nice time. Going from Gen Con, however… ugh. You drive from Indiana, which is flat and boring, into and through Ohio, which is flat and boring, and then when you’re kind of tired and sort of almost home, then you have to deal with all the mountain bullshit.

    So yeah, the trip to and from Gen Con was fine. And there’s a Buc-ee’s along the way now!

  • Final Three Con was Fine

    Okay, so Final Three Con (a local small-ish game convention primarily revolving around “social” gaming (namely social deduction, namely Blood on the Clocktower)) was last weekend, and I would have written this sooner, but you know. Stuff. (And Marathon.)

    I say “small-ish” because it has close to 1000 attendees, but that’s smaller than, say, Gen Con (with its 70,000 attendees) and probably the only Magic Con I’ve been to (Philly 2023), but still, 1000 people is a lot – especially when they’re all there to mainly do the same thing.

    It was a good time. I saw some people I haven’t seen in a while (despite ostensibly being a member of the same local gaming group) and played a lot of games.

    I didn’t do much else but play Clocktower (and The Gang – the unofficial second official game of Final Three Con); the board games I had with me drew some interest, but not from enough people at the same time, and when I had some downtime, I was usually just waiting for another event soon-ish, so I hung out in my hotel room or wandered around for food, drinks, or other stuff like that.

    Also, the Clocktower community is… weird. Like, in a lovely way, and it’s possibly because it’s so much smaller than the gamer community at large (so all the eccentricity is… distilled?) but as an, I guess, “normie” (where I’m not really all that unused to not necessarily fitting into a particular subculture) it’s… I don’t know… off-putting? Not really, but sometimes. Basically, it’s a culture that’s deeply online, to the point where if a game goes around and gives names, a handful will give some sort of online handle.

    And it’s… whatever. I get it (I think). It’s 2026; we’d all rather be somewhere else, or someone else (or I guess maybe these are people who primarily play the game online, and so don’t want to make a link between that identity and their “real world” identity) and that’s fair.

    It’s also an incredibly neurodivergent community. And I say that as someone who’s probably not 100% neurotypical (although I guess it depends on how “typical” one has to be). That’s definitely a good thing – that all of these people are welcome and comfortable and all just hanging out being themselves.

    And so it was a nice weekend of games, friends, weird people, and not really paying any attention to the outside world. (Including the NFL draft that was going on at the same time. Apparently the Steelers drafted the mid quarterback from Penn State.)

    It was fine.

  • You probably won’t reach “the top”, but it’s fine.

    I just got back from a weekend at a couple of concerts. On the drive home, I was hit with a few musings about the music and the overall experience, so I’m going to vomit out a couple of posts right here before I go back about my regular life and habits again. If you don’t see any others yet, check back; I’m writing them all at once but scheduling them to publish over the next day or so.

    One of the bands that played was Beartooth, and they played a song called Doubt Me. It’s a “fuck the haters” song about doing things people told you that you weren’t capable of doing. That’s basically a genre – sitting here and thinking about it, so many bands have at least one song in that category. (Several just from the two shows in Baltimore this weekend.)

    It makes sense – it’s probably a good analogue of being in the music industry. Lots of bands and artists come along and most of them don’t “make it,” so odds are, you aren’t going to, either. When you start out playing local venues and submitting demos, you probably hear “it’s not gonna happen” a lot.

    I really enjoy those sorts of songs; it’s fun to throw your success back in the face of the people who tried to stand in your way. But do most of us have those people?

    Personally, I think I might be the opposite. I was told that if I just put my mind to it, I could do anything. (At least by anyone whose opinion mattered – there are always just shitty people.) I just never really aspired to that level. I never dreamed of being the president, or a rock star, or an astronaut or anything like that.

    I don’t really know where I’m going (or where I’m even really trying to go) with this – I just had the though of like “yeah, fuck the haters… wait, who even are my haters?”

    I guess what’s really important, haters or not, is to make sure you have a grounded definition of success. If nothing short of being the best in the world will satisfy you, then regardless of people supporting you or not, you’re almost certainly going to fall short. If you treat each step along the way as another step up, though, then all of the efforts you put in will be validated.

    I’ll celebrate my accomplishments, and I (or someone who actually knows you) will also celebrate yours. To end on another Beartooth line, “come join me at the top.”

    It’ll be fine.

  • “Weird” is fine; “normal” is also fine.

    I just got back from a weekend at a couple of concerts. On the drive home, I was hit with a few musings about the music and the overall experience, so I’m going to vomit out a couple of posts right here before I go back about my regular life and habits again. If you don’t see any others yet, check back; I’m writing them all at once but scheduling them to publish over the next day or so.

    The first of the two concerts featured The Funeral Portrait, and they played a song of theirs called Stay Weird. It’s an anthem for the “weird” (read: emo/goth/punk/whatever) kids to not change and keep being their true selves. Now, in general, that’s a great message, and I’m all for music containing messages like this that people need to hear.

    (There’s a whole slew of what I’m sort of calling “mental health-core” about dealing with depression or addiction or self-harm; I’m glad these topics are out there in ways that aren’t as preachy or “after-school special-y”. Thinking about it, I think at least three out of four bands on Friday and two out of three on Saturday have at least some material like that.)

    But here’s one thing – when you’re playing an arena in downtown Baltimore with a capacity of 13,000 people, is anyone there “weird”? Sure, 13,000 isn’t a football or baseball game, but it’s also still a pretty good-sized crowd.

    I’m not weird. I work in an office at a consulting company. I have a 401(k) and a mortgage. I don’t dress all in black. (Except at concerts – note to bands: sell more t-shirts that aren’t black. At Summer of Loud, I got a Parkway Drive shirt that’s blue. At a Nothing More show, I got their tour shirt that’s red. There were cool Beartooth shirts, but I’m not that huge of a fan of theirs, but both of their live sets I’ve seen have been great. I expected Bad Omens to have something maybe red, but nope.)

    But then again, I’m into curling. Is that weird? I play board games, which feels like the normie-est shit out there, what with 70,000 people at Gen Con every year, but even other gamers often think my games are weird. Is professional wrestling weird? Conceptually, I think it’s mainstream, but it doesn’t draw the crowds it used to (although that could be mostly due to ticket prices).

    I’m reminded of the tagline (or one of the taglines) for the YouTube channel Wrestling With Wregret – “Like what you like, just don’t be a dick.” You should “stay weird,” not by specifically trying to be a non-conformist, but by just finding your lane. Find your style, your music, your hobbies. Enjoy things unashamedly. Don’t “be weird”, but don’t be afraid of being called weird.

    Because weird is normal, and normal is weird.

    And they’re both fine.

  • Not Having Anything to Say is Fine

    Hey, look, it’s been a month and there’s nothing new here! I had such high hopes coming into 2026. (Said nobody, right?)

    Anyway, I think I was hoping for this to mostly be longer “essay” type posts (not like “long form” but in the 1000-ish word range), and then I just sort of ran out of ideas in my immediate queue. I do still think I want to have those, but I don’t want to just post about That Fuckin’ Guy all the time. That’s the job of everybody else. I also don’t have any other weird niche content to write about like subway trains or weird maps or fake video games like some of the content creators I’m into. I’m just a content consumer posting into the void.

    But I guess that’s okay. Creators wouldn’t create without people watching/reading/playing their stuff, and while I hate that some days, I just sit and watch random things in my YouTube recommendations, I guess I at least like “educational” stuff? (Oh, and people gambling – I watch a bunch of that, too. I don’t know why.)

    So going forward, I think I’ll try to post more frequently, but less seriously (about games, food/drink, media… whatever is occupying my brain at a given moment), with occasional “essays” on bigger topics that have drawn my attention, and then for those quick one-liners that I have to vomit out into the void, I’ll put those on Bluesky, where my username is the URL for this site, so that’s convenient. Branding! (By the way, I’m still salty that I couldn’t get vice.rocks as a domain name. Who owns it?)

    I can only confirm one thing. Whatever state this site continues to exist in – it’ll be fine.

  • 2026 is going to be fine

    Just as it was “important” to put out some words about the year that’s ending, it’s equally important to then provide some additional words about the year to come.

    Is 2026 going to be “better” than 2025? Well, I certainly hope so, but also, that’s sort of the point of New Year’s, right? The changing of the calendar lets us set new baselines for ourselves. All the things we know we should have been doing for a long time get a little bit easier to do at the beginning of the year. Sure, that’s because of “New Year’s Resolutions” but there’s something else that always feels hopeful about a new year. I’m going to lose weight (even if I don’t put effort into it); I’m going to meet someone (even if I don’t go looking); I’m going to post more on that website I set up last year (No, really, I’m going to do that. Probably.).

    Given that, it’s easy to think 2026 is looking up. I mean, all the terrible garbage from 2025 is still going to be there, but also, all the good people out here helping deal with them are, too, and those people should have even more resolve, considering they got us this far.

    As for me, I’m still going to play games. I’m still going to play poker (including, probably, right on January 1st). I’m going to keep going to concerts, and I’m going to keep on curling (far less than I used to, but still roughly once a week and maybe a weekend or two away). I expect that wrestling will keep being good (and hopefully will come back to the DC metro area – specifically that AEW will come back to the DC area – WWE just did for John Cena’s retirement).

    At some point, we (probably) get GTA 6. We’re all waiting for that, right? And some movies? (I honestly don’t follow movies anymore; I’m sure there are some people are waiting for. Dune 3?)

    So keep your head up – a new year means new opportunities for self-improvement, or just to do those things you’ve been putting off, like getting back to the doctor, or calling your old friend. Or if you’re already perfect, then you can just keep doing that.

    So yeah… what am I doing in 2026? I guess what I did in 2025. If your 2025 was good, then I hope your 2026 is the same. If your 2025 was crap, then I hope your 2026 is better. Looking forward from here, I can only assume it’ll be fine.

    And, you know, maybe IT will happen. That would be interesting, wouldn’t it? Maybe thinking about that will get you through the year.

  • 2025 was fine

    Like all good (and most mediocre to bad) content creators, it’s time for a year-end wrap up.

    In 2025, we saw the beginning of what has been described as the “American century of humiliation.” First of all, that captures the vibe pretty well. I remember in the early 2000s when people would say they were embarrassed to be American (and the group that would become known as The Chicks basically got cancelled for saying they were embarrassed to be from the same state as the President), but I really do feel like we’re at a point where, if you aren’t American, and you meet someone who is, your first reaction would be “That’s rough, buddy” or maybe just “Oof”. (Yeah, everyone in this interaction communicates primarily in memes. What of it?)

    So yeah, we had tariffs, then we didn’t, then we did, but nobody knew how much, and then we had roving kidnapping squads around the country and people who don’t believe in medicine in charge of funding medicine… the United States is no longer “a shining city on a hill” but instead a glowing dumpster fire in a dark alley.

    And elsewhere in the world, we have wars, multiple countries undertaking what could be called genocides, climate change, more billionaires doing even less for anyone else… things aren’t great.

    But you know what, people are still fighting. People are marching about those genocides, some places are doing at least something to try to alleviate (or live with) climate change, and the courts are frequently putting the big wet dipshit president in his place. (I know back at the beginning I said I wasn’t going to do political posts, and I think I’ll still stick to that, but come on, there was really one big thing sort of hovering over us all this year.)

    And we’re all getting through it. If you’re reading this, you’re still here. Your friends are here, and you’re helping each other get through it. You might be thinking “actually, I’m not really helping” but you probably are. If you hang out with your friends and talk about things that aren’t the overall collapse of our society, then you’re helping to cope with it. If you’re still finding joy out there, then you’re helping others to do that, too.

    For me, I decided to start going to concerts in 2025, and went to… [checks calendar] six? I think that’s right. And I went to Gen Con! And curling in Canada! I got my friends to start watching wrestling with me, and I played in an actual RPG campaign. I made the largest cash I’ve ever had so far in a poker tournament. More recently, my sister got engaged, and asked me to walk her down the aisle at her wedding, so that’s cool.

    So there you have it – there was a lot of garbage in 2025, but there was good stuff, too. My 2025 was fine. I hope yours was fine, too.

    EDIT: Looking back at my social media, I forgot there was an Anglican schism! That reminds me of all the tangential history we got to see. A new Pope. (From America!) A woman Archbishop of Canterbury (that a bunch of churches don’t recognize). A lot of trivia books are going to have a lot of notes about 2025!

  • The holidays are fine; I’m fine.

    Just banging out a “quick” post to provide some updates to the <checks analytics> zero people who visit the site. Cool cool cool. Anyway, I set this up as, I guess, a sort of New Year’s Resolution last year to “make something”. I don’t (at least yet) aspire to be any sort of “content creator” so I’m not getting in to streaming (although I’ve done it) or making YouTube videos (although I’ve done it and will likely do it again when the “my friends will probably want to watch this” feeling strikes me again) or even writing longform essays (although that’s closer, I’m not about to start a newsletter or anything). However, I do still have all these dumb ideas floating inside my dumb head, and I’m still going to vomit them onto this site, and hopefully even more frequently! (Stay tuned for that!)

    Anyway, things are fine. Thanksgiving was fun; I went back “home” and saw family (including the small portion of my family inurned in the National Cemetery of the Alleghenies, which is beautiful) and ate and had a nice weekend. And then immediately after Thanksgiving is over (or really, even before it’s over), “Christmas” starts, and that comes with its own big pile of stressors.

    For me, it’s not a big deal – the stressors aren’t things like “oh my god I’m so lonely and I can’t handle it” – I get why some people experience that, and if that’s you, I’m sorry. Especially in this day and age, not only are there people out there with nobody close to them, but there are possibly even more people who do have people, but for whatever reason can’t turn to those people. (Parents who have fallen down conspiracy rabbit holes, communities who have decided you’re no longer acceptable company, or friends who, maybe just through the ceaseless march of time, have drifted away and started entirely separate lives.) It can be overwhelming to be surrounded by a world that keeps hammering you with “it’s a time for celebration, and togetherness, and magic” while also providing you with nothing to celebrate, nobody to be with, and nothing at all magical.

    If that’s you; I don’t know what to tell you, other than… I get it, I think. I can’t say that I’m really “celebrating” anything right now, and the family I’m visiting this week for Christmas are mostly working all week, so I’ll still be mostly occupying an empty house, just someone else’s house (which might be worse?). I could never understand the magnitude of what you’re feeling, but I think I can at least comprehend why you’re feeling it, and I hope you make it through the season. If it’s because you’re lonely, try to find the other lonely people and help each other hold it together. If it’s because you’re just “over it” – that’s ok. You have no real obligations other than the ones you place on yourself. (You might think other people are placing them on you, but you can tell them to shove it. Hell, maybe you’ve already done that, which might have been what led to the loneliness. If that’s the case, then you still probably did the right thing for yourself because boundaries are important.)

    My holiday stressors are much more mundane – as soon as Thanksgiving is over, the “Christmas to-do list” starts. I have to buy all the gifts. I have to buy, write, and mail the cards. (I didn’t do that this year.) I have to get stuff for the work holiday party. I have to get stuff for my friends’ party. I have to have the money to do all of these things. I have to have the time to do all of these things, while still otherwise maintaining a day-to-day life. (As an aside, I feel like everyone else “does” more stuff than I do, but they also still have more free time, too? I don’t know how that works, and it’s probably just either my perception or they’re spending more time and effort on looking like they have it together…)

    But the gifts are purchased, and the work party has happened, and the friends’ party is in a couple of hours, and I have just one more work day (at least before Christmas; I don’t take off the week between Christmas and New Year’s), and so the stressful part of the holiday is in the past. On Thursday, the gifts will be exchanged, and then the “oh, I guess that’s it, then” feelings will hit, and then it’s right back to… whatever it is. Back to jobs we don’t like that don’t pay enough. Back to a world that gives you something to be outraged about every single day, but doesn’t give you any time to really feel that outrage, both because of the aforementioned job(s) and because the next day brings something new.

    It does feel like this year is possibly the least “Christmassy” it’s felt in a long time. I don’t know if it’s the political atmosphere (which blows) or the economy (which certainly makes spending a bunch of money on other people feel less good than it usually does), or just getting older (and everyone in my family getting older) making us all just want to spend less time on this stuff. Another theory I have is that, with “Christmas season” expanding more and more into the rest of the year, all the cheer and whatnot kind of gets diluted and there isn’t any left when the actual holiday rolls around.

    But with all that said… it’s fine? There’s still something “nice” about the holidays, sort of capping off the year and letting us all reflect and reset and prepare for another one. I’ll make another post soon sort of “wrapping up” 2025 and then another laying out 2026. (Spoiler alert: just as setting up this page was a sort of “resolution” for 2025, I’ll have another for 2026 to actually use it more. Maybe as frequently as weekly? Weekly is tough, because I don’t know that I really have that much to talk about. We’ll see.)