I’m going to put all of my cards on the table here, folks.

This last year has been a real motherfucker.

A shit slurry of what is going on in the world, what is going on in this country, the economy, the job hunt, the weather, rising costs and lower wages…I don’t need to do a list. You all have eyes, and live, more or less, in the same world as me. And getting through it at times has been hard.

Like, REAL hard.

But here we are, two months and change left to go, and while things aren’t necessariliy better, we are finding ways to sane (relatively) around this house.

Here’s what has helped get us through:

Casual Video Games

Spouse and I have been playing Stardew Valley in couch co-op mode for a while now. We’ve really doubled down on it since the ’24 election. It has helped us dissassociate with the best of them! It allows us to lose ourselves in a world where we can make a difference and thrive and, in once instance, adopting WAY too many cats.

We have also been playing a lot of Tiny Bookshop lately. The idea of running a small, mobile bookshop in a quaint seaside town, recommending books, and making friends has been a balm for our soul.

Both are indie games, and are kind of cream of the crop for us, but there are a lot of cozy games out there that will fill this role for you.

Asian Drama

We’ve been watching a lot of drama series from Korea, Thailand, China, and Japan over the years. We’ve really doubled down on the Thai stuff lately, pretty much all of which has been BL/GL (Boy Love/Girl Love) queer content. And if you’re not watching Asian TV, you’re missing out. Sorry, but you are.

For the most part, these shows are a set number of episodes and done, so no waiting a year or more for a new season. Very few of them run multiple seasons, and even those that do have satisfying resolutions for each season. Once you’ve watched enough, you start to find comfort in the fact that they’re almost all just fifteen tropes in a trenchcoat. You can even make Bingo cards and take a shot of soju whenever someone wins, like we have done.

Another advantage is that having to read subtitles keeps us off our phone more than if we were watching something in English. I cannot stress enough you do not want to watch the dubbed versions. Trust me on this. The subtitles won’t hurt you. They’re here to help you.

Finally, the queer-normative worlds of the BL/GL series are refreshing. It’s not just one or two queer characters crammed into a world of straight people with sad endings. Most of these shows have multiple love stories in a single season, all of which are queer, and most of them are just accepted without question. Thailand legalized gay marriage a few years ago, and a lot of the shows end in marriages these days, and I love it. And yes, some of the shows are prime-time soap opera trashy, Girl Rules, Harmony’s Secret, Kinn Porche, and Pit Babe all come to mind here, but despite being sexy, they aren’t pornographic. You might see some bare boy ass from time to time, but we’re all adults here.

Creative Endeavors

Spouse is a visual artist. I am a writer. We both knit. Being able to create something in a world that increasingly tells you that the arts aren’t valuable (a big fuck you to A.I.) is life-affirming. We have both pursued monetizing our art. To some degree we still do. But it’s not what drives either of us. We’re driven just by making cool shit. If no one else enjoys it, that’s fine. What matters is that we do.

That satisfaction of having made something is incredible.

And the distraction from the world while you’re creating is priceless. This past year, I’ve turned anxiety into knitwear. Over thirty scarves, to be specific.

I wrote a full book this last year and expect to finish first drafts of two more before 2026 is done. One of those I’m writing with the spouse who has just finished a new art series and is contemplating a gallery show. And every minute we spent doing it is an act of defiance.

Physical Media

Imagine our surprise to find out that shows that we bought digitally are no longer available to us. It happens. But that doesn’t make it right. More and more, we’re returning to physical media. DVD’s, CD’s, and yes, albums.

While we still stream content, usually TV shows, more and more we are finding joy in having something physical and permenent. And with music, I tend to listen to full albums even when I am streaming, so doing so on a record player or CD player allows me to listen without having to be online.

You know. Where the monsters are.

Community

There’s a saying that feels more relevant this year than ever before: No one is coming to save us but us.

For that reason, we’ve made efforts to improve our connections with people. Sometimes with online hangouts, because we live in the boondocks, or with occasional meet-ups in physical locations, or the occasional protest.

The spouse occasionally meets friends in the area for coffee or knitting in public. I have joined a poetry club and knitting group at the local senior center. I have an online writing church I organized on Sunday every week. There are occaional online RPG’s, and every other Sunday night, I gather online with some of my oldest friends in this city to play boardgames on Bordgames Arena while I knit and listen to jazz. Every Wednesday, I have a #HorrorWritersChat on Bluesky so I can connect with my fellow horror nerds, and I am active in a horror lovers community on Tumblr, the least toxic of social media sites.

All of this helps keep us grounded and serves as a reminder that we are not going through this alone.

Conclusion:

Ultimately what it comes down to is that we’ve found that while it’s good to be informed about what’s going on in the world, a lot of it, like 98% of it, is noise. It’s evil people saying stupid things, and normal people being outraged about it but nothing really changing. It’s great to get out and protest. I’ve done it a few times myself. But spinning myself in angry circles online isn’t helping anyone. In fact, in my case at least, it makes the depression and anxiety worse.

So I check in and keep tabs on some of the less toxic social media platforms, mostly Bluesky. But I don’t let myself get pulled down into a cycle of outrage. And on occasion, I will put the phone in the other room, or on Airplane mode, and just clock out from the bigger world. Some of you might remember what that was like, when we weren’t exposed to the worst thoughts of the dumbest people on the planet every fifteen minutes?

The thing we have to remember, and which I would suggest you remember as well, is that when the time comes to make change and make a difference, do it. But put your own air mask on first. Be kind to yourself. Take time to breathe, to heal, to rest.

This world is dead set on grinding us all down into meat for the beast. So find joy where you can. Make joy where you can’t find it. Look out for each other. And know that when all of this is over, and it WILL be over, we will have the chance to remake the world better than it was before.