What an odd year 2021 has been. We started it with Covid cases skyrocketing and no obvious government plan to contain the spread, and we ended it with, um…
Oh no.
Anyway, in the vein of 2020’s edition, it’s time to talk about the things that got me through a year that has been personally pretty great, but politically and socially exhausting.
Vaccines
Let’s start with the most obvious one, shall we?
The British government’s slow rollout of Covid vaccines — rolled out over an absurdly long schedule, with second doses 12 weeks after the first to make sure there wasn’t a shortage — meant that I started to plan out how my first jab would go. As soon as I was called up, I’d rock up to a vaccination centre wearing a ridiculous, garish Chris Whitty t-shirt, say the exact words “shoot it directly into my veins,” and strut out to Shots by LMFAO. It would be an event. Somebody (and by somebody, I mean me) would applaud me.
It didn’t quite work out like that. I was so eager to get the jab that a friend with ties to the local vaccination effort told me a site ten minutes’ walk from my house was offering jabs to anyone who’d turn up, regardless of the government’s age limits, and I was there within 15 minutes of finishing my shift. I told the St John’s Ambulance volunteer who vaccinated me, a lovely lady called Sue, that I was excited about getting the vaccine; she told me she’d found it exciting, too. Walking out after a 15-minute observation period, I felt incredible.
I’ve been jabbed four times this year — I got my Covid booster just before Christmas, and I got my flu jab to err on the safe side — and every time it’s felt like a relief. Of course it doesn’t make the virus go away, and I can still get Covid, especially this new Omicron variant that’s running rampant and making it all feel like March 2020 again. But not only am I less likely to end up in hospital with severe disease, I’m vastly more likely to be able to spend an evening with my friends at the pub, or to be able to go and see my family again.
And frankly, both of those things make all the dead arms and mild colds worth it.
Daði Freyr
Look, I won’t shut up about Eurovision. If you’ve been reading all of these emails then you know I won’t shut up about Eurovision. But through Eurovision in 2020 I found Daði Freyr, and through Daði Freyr in 2021 I found so much more.
This year I jumped into Daði’s Discord community, and for the first time really jumped full-force into a fandom. I’d seen my partner do it countless times before, but it wasn’t something I’d ever really jumped head-first into — and only when I spent more time with the Daðaists, as they’re called, did I realise why he did it.
Daði’s community of fans gave me a proper emotional investment in this year’s Eurovision, where he came fourth in the final without leaving his hotel room. They’ve also given me a group of new internet friends; we support each other, even when times are rough, with the half-joking line don’t be saði, listen to Daði.
And look: his music is really good. Feel The Love — released on New Year’s Day — felt like the antidote to a locked-down winter. Eurovision entry 10 Years was an absolute bop — and seeing Daði perform it live, in my city, with my partner, best friend, and hundreds of others was an out of body experience. Somebody Else Now (about embracing being a better person) and Clear My Head (about the times he’s just needed to ramble on about what’s in his head to his wife Árný) are also just wonderfully produced pieces of pop. I can’t wait to see what he does next.
Halo Infinite
Let’s get this out of the way first: Halo Infinite isn’t my game of the year. Death’s Door, Psychonauts 2, Forza Horizon 5, and Disco Elysium are the games I really love that I played in 2021, and I’m yet to play Infinite’s apparently pretty good campaign — my Dad and I have played every Halo game in co-op since Combat Evolved, and we don’t intend to stop now.
What Halo Infinite is, though, is a game with a damn fine multiplayer mode. Infinite's PvP combat is faultless, with punchy weapons, hilarious vehicular carnage, and a delightful sense of speed and momentum aided by tools like the new grappleshot. Facing off against an enemy always feels rife with tension, and pulling off a kill with a switched-to sidearm as your Mjolnir armour is about to fall apart is endlessly satisfying.
It’s still a fairly barebones thing, and it still needs to work out how its daily challenges should encourage enough progression to keep players going, but the foundations are there. It’s the first Game-as-a-Service I feel genuinely invested in, and one that doesn’t feel like it’s too keen to destroy its reputation on microtransactions. I can’t wait to see what the future of Infinite looks like.
Building PCs
A few years ago, I thought of myself as the kind of person who was done fiddling about with PCs. They were a pain to maintain, I told myself, from the software all the way down to the hardware, and fiddling about with an iPad married to a keyboard was about all I could stomach as a 9-to-5 worker drone.
Then lockdown happened, and I decided to rebuild my old, 2009-vintage desktop, keeping the case but gearing its internals for reasonably priced PC gaming, and it was fun. I enjoyed picking out parts, making sure everything worked, tweaking it for the best performance, and having a massive digital library of games to play with my PC-first friends.
This year, I played my part in a ton of builds for friends, either consulting on PCPartPicker lists or building the whole shebang for folks. A friend jokingly suggested I have a cartoon sticker of myself doing fingerguns on the machines I built for folks, and my fiancé made it happen.
It’s also just been nice to do. Building computers, while occasionally frustrating, is really therapeutic; there’s a routine you can get into as you put the parts together. Explaining what does what, and why I picked the parts I did, made me feel really smart, which was nice for the old mental wellbeing, and teaching folks to put parts together was super gratifying.
I’m itching to build some more systems in the year ahead. Seriously, if you want to build a PC please talk to me. I will help.
My friends, family, and fiancé
This year wouldn’t have been this year without my friends, both local and online, and my family, whom I got to see in person for the first time in a while this year. Dad, Jan, Loz, Cory, Lex, Reece, Jaz, Rich, Mia, Matt, Jon, Mish, Bronwyn, Joseph, Noah, Joe, jc, Jack, Luke, Jacob, Jon, Oscar, Rain, Morgan, Ellie… too many of you to mention, in all honesty. You’ve all made 2021 worth it, whether through Discord VCs, Gears of War playthroughs, park hangouts, pub hangouts, or just being there.
And of course, I couldn’t have gotten through 2021 without Markus, who surprised the living daylights out of me by proposing when we went to see Daði. This has been a hellish couple of years, and I couldn’t have done it without you.
Whether you’re welcoming in the New Year alone or with friends, virtually or physically, I hope you have a fantastic 2022 — things can only look up, right?
Right?