#it is still 2021 and i am on call with a few friends playing co-op and grinding domains together

[aroacewxs]

umm shit fuck shit i miss genshin impact so badly but i could never actually redownload it and start playing again because that would erase the idealized version of it that sleeps in my head where there were only three regions including dragonspine, the character designs were actually goated, and the lore wasn't exhausting to get through

[zaptap]

ive made a few of these bingo sheets and theyre fun so i decided to make one not just for e3 but also JUST for splatoon 3 (not just for e3 but for like the whole lifetime of the game). also heres my updated list of characters id like to see in smash, ordered generally by which id like more and/or think are the most realistic

since min min got in i took out helix, and since i couldnt decide whether to add in waluigi or madeline i added another row (realistically i dont think any indies are getting in but i threw some in anyway). also i was like “oh yeah maybe theyd put in a gen viii pokemon” so i threw in hatterene since thats one of my favorites.

also as for waluigi (and shovel knight for that matter) i think it would be nice to see an assist trophy get in just to break that rule. also i remember being super surprised he wasnt in brawl (back then i thought he and wario were equally important) and even though that was based on a wrong impression ive still felt like he should be in there ever since

notes about the bingos under the cut

really is about time for those n64 games, especially now that mario is dead so theyre free to release sm64 on it. game boy games would be nice sometime too

would also make sense to include banjo-kazooie in that, nintendos had a good relationship with microsoft lately and the total absence of anything banjo-kazooie on the switch is odd since it’s a dlc character (every other one has a game on switch they can use for cross-marketing, even if joker’s took a while) and i think the best explanation for that would be that theyre holding off for the nso n64 app (this is easiest from a technical standpoint because all they have to do is make a deal to use the roms)

when are they putting octolings in mk8d

xenoblade chronicles x is one of the only wii u games left that they could port (aside from ones that wouldnt make much sense like splatoon and ssb4) so i guess that might as well happen sometime. also monolith soft might be doing something else besides helping with splatoon 3

im not ready for metroid prime 4 (im over halfway through mp2 and therefore the trilogy as a whole) but it’s been a while, they might show it and it could even come out this year

hal apparently recently hinted at a new kirby game or something

the upgraded switch is obviously going to be called the Nintendo Switch ͥ  since they already did the ds lite so theyre clearly naming everything in the family after the ds family, theres absolutely no flaw in this logic. idk if theyre showing it, but unlike 2019 they didnt say they werent showing new hardware (just that they were showing software, which could be taken as denying rumors, but they sometimes specify when certain things arent being shown)

metroid prime trilogy also might come this year. would make sense to release it before mp4 since not everyone is going to buy a wii u to get it (and at this point that doesnt get nintendo any money since they stopped making them)

where is detective pikachu 2. i hope it has the blue pikachu from that first tease they gave us in like 2014 (2013? that was a loooong time ago idk)

they said this was MOSTLY 2021 so i am absolutely getting my hopes up for splatoon 2

the two sinnoh games could likely be there

would be super cool if oddity came to switch. and almost as ironic as megalovania getting into smash

we havent seen the botw sequel for a couple years so we’re kind of due for an update on that

it’s ace attorney’s 20th anniversary this year so maybe theyre doing something. theyre already porting those games though so idk. maybe he’s getting in smash

whats with that watermelon mario render

i held off on watching a playthrough for ndrv3 on the off chance it came to switch and i could play a dangan ronpa game for real for once but it’s now been 4 years and we just passed the 10th anniversary of the series (albeit during a pandemic when i wouldnt expect them to have done anything) so it would be cool to see the series come to switch. i think if it still doesnt after this though i’ll just watch the playthrough, 4 years is long enough. amazed ive avoided spoilers this long, i still know next to nothing about the game

im about done with acnh but im still waiting on those splatoon items. and i ran out of storage in february so i need more of that too

nintendo did stuff for zelda’s 30th anniversary so i doubt theyre forgetting the 35th. maybe wwhd/tphd ports, idk

been a couple years since fire emblem, intelligent systems is probably up to something besides planning yet another paper mario spinoff

miyamoto forgot pikmin 4 in the oven 6 years ago and it got burnt to a crisp and thats why it hasnt come out yet because he had to start over

and splatoon

the inklings scared daft punk into quitting so now that theres no competition in the robot musician scene they should have a daft punk style group

i waited and waited and neither of my top two splatoon stages (flounder and d’alfonsino) came back in splatoon 2 so i hope just because splatoon 3 isnt in inkopolis doesnt mean they still wont return

would be sick as hell if there was a real hide and seek mode instead of just sticking to your own rules in private battles. havent played that since 2015 but it was super fun

show us the effects of the chaos world

i wanted mc craig to have a song in octo expansion and they didnt deliver. heres another chance

splatnet 3 baby

cant wait for nogami to do a funny 3 pose

abxy came back for splatoon 2.... am i gonna be that lucky again...?

salmon run doesnt make sense if youre friends with a smallfry but they could either change the story context (you just fight “evil” salmonids?) or replace it with an equally fun co-op mode

amiibo!!! i think i said this before but they should label them by weapons if these cephalopods dont have genders, would make more sense (the gendered ones had different weapons anyway)

returning characters!!!! would like to see everyone have a role of some kind

maybe #GearForAll wasnt successful in getting the emperor/spy/mecha gear, but perhaps theyll at least consider not making that stuff exclusive this time around

squid girl gear should be back. and they should call it a dress instead of a tunic because its a dress. and theres no gender now anyway

as ive said before... TRIPLIES!! you hold one in each hand and another in your mouth. and you can spin around like the tasmanian devil

remove splatfest tee annoyances: you should have a prompt at the end of a splatfest to pay to scrub your tee (to make sure you get the chunks) also it should be on a neutral brand so you dont end up with an overabundance of ink resistance up (or whatever else)

better online and cloud saves would certainly justify having a second splatoon game on the same console, as much as im loving that it exists

hopefully theres a global testfire again

sooner or later the workers will rise up and kill mr grizz

remember in splatoon 1 where if you had squid beatz (via the amiibo) you could “play” it in the lobby and change the music? then you were stuck listening to only bubble bath in splatoon 2? why did they take that option away they should bring it back

looking at those apartment buildings in the trailer i think it would be cool if you had your own room and could decorate it

an octavio redemption arc would be fun to see. in the manga he stole the zapfish because the octarians had an energy crisis, and in the end they worked out a deal to share the electricity

[ducktastic]

2020 Gameological Awards

Over on the Gameological Discord, we have an annual tradition of writing up our games of the year not as a ranked list but rather as answers to a series of prompts. Here are my personal choices for the year that was 2020.

Favorite Game of the Year

I didn’t know what to expect when I walked into Paradise Killer. I knew that I liked the vaporwave resort aesthetic from the game’s trailer and figured I was in for a Danganronpa-style murder mystery visual novel with an open-ended murder mystery at its core. Those assumptions were… half-right? The game definitely plays out like the exploration bits of Danganronpa set on the island from Myst but with far simpler puzzles. What I didn’t expect was to fall so deeply in love with the environment—its nooks and crannies, its millennia of lore, its brutalist overlap of idol worship, consumerism, and mass slaughter. It makes sense that the world of Paradise Killer is its strongest feature, since the cast of NPCs don’t really move around, leaving you alone with the world for the overwhelming majority of your experience as you bounce back and forth between digging around for clues and interrogating potential witnesses. And despite what the promo materials indicated, there IS a definitive solution to the crimes you’re brought in to investigate, the game just lets you make judgment based on whatever evidence you have at the time you’re ready to call it a day, so if you’re missing crucial evidence you might just make a compelling enough case for the wrong person and condemn them to eternal nonexistence. Am I happy with the truth at the end of the day? No, and neither is anybody else I’ve spoken to who completed the game, but we all were also completely enthralled the entire time and our dissatisfaction has less to do with the game and more to do with the ugly reality of humanity. I’ve always been of the mindset that “spoilers” are absolute garbage and that a story should be just as good whether you know the twist or not and any story that relies on surprising the audience with an unexpected reveal is not actually that good a story, but Paradise Killer is a game about piecing together your own version of events so I feel that it’s vital to the gameplay experience that people go in knowing as little as possible and gush all about it afterwards. Just trust me, if the game looks even remotely intriguing to you, go for it. I’ve had just as much fun talking about the game after I finished it with friends just getting started as I did actually solving its mysteries myself.

Best Single Player Game

I honestly missed out on the buzz for In Other Waters at launch, so I’m happy I had friends online talking it up as Black Friday sales were coming along. The minimal aesthetic of his underwater exploration game allows the focus to shift more naturally to the game’s stellar writing as a lone scientist goes off in search of her mentor and the secrets they were hiding on an alien world. It only took a few hours for me to become completely absorbed in this narrative and keep pushing forward into increasingly dangerous waters. In Other Waters might just be the best sci-fi story I experienced all year and I’d highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys sci-fi novels, regardless of their experience with video games.

Best Multiplayer Game

Look, we all know this year sucked. 2020 will absolutely be chronicled in history books as a fascinating and deeply depressing time in modern history where we all stayed inside by ourselves and missed our friends and family. It was lonely and it was bleak. Which is why it made my heart glow so much more warmly every time I got a letter from an honest-to-goodness real-life friend in Animal Crossing New Horizons. Knowing that they were playing the same game I was and hearing about their experiences and sending each other wacky hats or furniture, it lightened the days and made us feel that little bit more connected. Sure, when the game first launched we would actually take the time to visit one another’s islands, hang out, chat in real-time, and exchange gifts, but we all eventually got busy with Zoom calls, sourdough starters, and watching Birds of Prey twenty-two times. Still, sending letters was enough. It was and still is a touching little way to show that we’re here for one another, if not at the exact same time.

Favorite Ongoing Game

Zach Gage is one of my favorite game designers right now, and when I heard he was releasing a game called Good Sudoku I was sold sight unseen. The game as released was… fine. It’s sudoku and it’s pleasant, but it was also buggy and overheated my phone in a way I hadn’t seen since Ridiculous Fishing (also by Zach Gage) seven years ago. Thankfully, the most glaring bugs have been fixed and I can now enjoy popping in every day for some quick logic puzzle goodness. Daily ranked leaderboards keep me coming back again and again, the steady ramp of difficulty in the arcade and eternal modes means I can always chase the next dopamine rush of solving increasingly complex puzzles. It’s not a traditional “ongoing” game the way, say, Fortnite and Destiny are, but I’m happy to come back every day for sudoku goodness.

Didn't Click For Me

With Fortnite progressively losing me over the course of 2020, finalizing with my wholesale “never again” stance after Epic boss Tim Sweeney compared Fortnite demanding more money from Apple to the American Civil Rights movement (no, absolutely not), I dipped my toe into a number of new “battle pass”-style online arena types of games, and while Genshin Impact eventually got its hooks into me, Spellbreak absolutely did not. With graphics straight out of The Dragon Prince and the promise of a wide variety of magic combat skills to make your character your own, the game seemed awfully tempting, but my first few experiences were aimless and joyless, with no moment of clarity to make me understand why I should keep coming back. Maybe they’ll finesse the game some more in 2021, or a bunch of my friends will get hooked and lure me back, but for now I am a-okay deleting this waste of space on my Switch and PC.

"Oh Yeah, I Did Play That Didn't I?"

I remember being really excited for Murder By Numbers. Ace Attorney-style crime scene investigation visual novel with Picross puzzles for the evidence, art by the creators of Hatoful Boyfriend, and music by the composer of Ace Attorney itself?! Sounds like a dream come true. But the pixel-hunt nature of the crime scene investigations was more frustrating than fun, the picross puzzles were not particularly great, and the game came out literally a week before the entire world went into lockdown which makes it feel more like seven years ago than just earlier this year. I remember being marginally charmed by the game once it was in my hands, but as soon as my mind shifted to long-term self care, Murder By Numbers went from hot topic to cold case.

Most Unexpected Joy

I was looking forward to Fuser all year. As a dyed-in-the-wool DropMix stan, the prospect of a spiritual sequel to DropMix on all major digital platforms without any of the analogue components was tremendously exciting, and I knew I’d have a lot of fun making mixes by myself and posting them online for the world to hear. What I didn’t expect, however, was the online co-op mode to be such a blast! Up to four players take turns making 32 bars of mashups, starting with whatever the player before handed them and adding their own fingerprints on top. It sounds like it should just be a mess of cacophony, but every session I’ve played so far has been just the best dance party I’ve had all year, and everyone not currently in control of the decks (including an audience of spectators) can make special requests for what the DJ should spin and tap along with the beat to great super-sized emoji to show how much they’re enjoying the mix. Literally the only times my Apple Watch has ever warned me of my heightened heart rate have been the times I was positively bouncing in place rocking out to co-op freestyle play in Fuser.

Best Music

Only one video game this year had tunes that were so bumpable they were upgraded to my general “2020 jams” playlist alongside Jeff Rosenstock, Run the Jewels, and Phoebe Bridgers, and that game was Paradise Killer. 70% lo-fi chill beats to study/interrogate demons to, 20% gothic atmospheric bangers, 10% high-energy pop jazz, this soundtrack was just an absolute joy to swim around in both in and out of gameplay.

Favorite Game Encounter

It’s wild that in a landscape where games let me live out my wildest fantasies, the single moment that lit me up in a way that stood out to me more than any other was serving Neil the right drink in Coffee Talk. Over the course of the game, you serve a variety of hot drinks to humans, werewolves, vampires, orcs, and more, all while chatting with your customers and learning more about their lives and relationships. The most mysterious customer, though, is an alien life form who adopts the name Neil. They do not know what they want to drink and claim it doesn’t make a difference because they cannot taste it. Everybody else wants *something*. Neil is just ordering for the sake of fitting in and exploring the Earth experience. It’s only in the second playthrough that attentive baristas will figure out what to serve Neil, unlocking the “true” ending in the process. Seeing the typically stoic Neil actually emote when they tasted their special order drink? What an absolute treat that was.

Best Free DLC of the Year

It’s still only a couple of days old at the time I’m writing this, but Marvel’s Avengers just added Kate Bishop, aka Hawkeye, and THANK GOODNESS. Almost every character in the game at launch just smashed the endless waves of robot baddies with their fists and that looks exhausting and uncomfortable. Hawkeye (the game calls her Kate Bishop, but come on, she’s been Hawkeye in the comics for over 14 years, let’s show her some respect) uses A SWORD. FINALLY! Aside from that, I’m just having a blast shooting arrows all over the place. She and Ms Marvel are the most likable characters in the game so far, so I hope they keep adding more of the Young Avengers and Champions to the game, and if the recently announced slate of Marvel movies and tv shows are any indication (with America Chavez, Cassie Lang, and Riri Williams all coming soon to the MCU), that seems to be what Marvel is pushing for across all media

Most Accessible Game

Nintendo is, first and foremost, a toy company. They got their start in toys and cards long before video games was a thing, and they still do more tests to ensure their video game hardware is childproof than anybody else in the industry (remember how they made Switch cartridges “taste bad” so kids wouldn’t eat them?). This year, Nintendo got to rekindle some of their throwback, simplistic, toys-and-cards energy with Clubhouse Games: 51 Worldwide Classics, a Switch collection of timeless family-friendly games like Chess, Mancala, and Backgammon, along with “toy” versions of sports like baseball, boxing, and tennis for a virtual parlor room of pleasant time-wasters. The games were all presented with charming li’l explainers from anthropomorphic board game figurines, and the ability to play quick sessions of Spider Solitaire on the touch screen while I binged The Queen’s Gambit on Netflix made Clubhouse Games one of my most-played titles of the year. Plus, local play during socially-distant friend hangs was an excellent way to make us feel like we were much closer than we were physically allowed to be as friends knocked each other’s block off in the “toy boxing” version of Rock’em Sock’em Robots.

"Waiting for Game-dot"

I get that everyone loves Disco Elysium. I saw it on everyone’s year-end lists last year. I finally bought it with an Epic Games Store coupon this year. This year was a long enough slog of depressing post-apocalyptic drudgery, I didn’t want to explore a whole nother one in my leisure time. I’ll get to it… someday.

Game That Made Me Think

Holovista was an iPhone game I played over the course of two or three days based on the recommendation of some trusted colleagues on Twitter and oh my goodness was I glad that I played it. What starts as a chill vaporwave photography game steadily progresses into an exploration of psychological trauma, relationships with friends and family, and the baggage we carry with us from our pasts. In this exceptionally hard year, I badly needed this story about spending time alone with your personal demons and finding your way back to the people who love and support you. Just like with Journey and Gone Home, I walked away from Holovista feeling a rekindled appreciation for the people in my life.

[rantingisabadhabitbutwhatev]

June 28, 2021

Well, it's been a few years since I wrote anything here. Mostly because these past few years have been an absolute whirlwind. My last post ended with Sean and I almost becoming official. Well, last week we had our 3 year anniversary together. Time flies.

Since my last post, I got accepted into the biotechnology program, for which I am forever grateful for. The program is very, very difficult and was the most mentally and emotionally taxing thing I had ever done up until that point. Being in class from 8:30am-4:30pm everyday with only 1 hour lunch break was rough. 6 to 7 classes a term was rough. Having a never ending midterm season was rough. But it was worth it. I made some amazing friends who I will hopefully have for the rest of my life. I gained some amazing lab skills and had some amazing opportunities. And best of all, I can actually see an end goal for my career. I don't know exactly what it will look like yet, but I know I want to be working on research in some sort of management position. Maybe not for forever, but for some time at least.

First year at BCIT was rough. Hard adjustments, lots of work and figuring out our class dynamic. But I came out of it stronger, knowing more about what I could do and how to succeed. Sean and I went through a rough patch in November of our first year together. His best friend from high school, whom he had feelings for for most of the time in school with her, was breaking up with her boyfriend of 5 years and basically went to Sean and said "I said no in the past but if you asked me now, I would say yes." And he doesn't know what to do so all he can do is come and tell me about it. And of course this happens on my birthday. So what do I do for my 18th birthday? Cry all night long. Yea, it was fun. It takes him a week to decide to choose us. Pretty rough but in the end it makes us stronger, especially since she comes around again in a year (but I'll get to that). After that Christmas, things change again. We were happy and then suddenly we stopped texting. Because of my schedule, we could only see each other once a week on Fridays. Everything was fine when we were together but during the week, everything felt empty and wrong. It took us until April to finally talk about it - I even wrote a letter about being upset that he's never read. But we finally talk about it and we figure out that we need to talk more and so we start calling each other. From then on, we try to discord each night and it has done us well.

After my first year at BCIT, I land my first co-op job in the Hancock Lab. I didn't think I was going to get a job at that point but I was so glad that I did. We did some really cool stuff with pseudomonas where we screened mutants for biofilm defects and tested biofilm growth in anaerobic conditions. I got to present my first poster at CBR Research Day. The lab pre-covid is amazing. Susan bought us beer and pizza and sushi every Friday and over the course of the summer, the drinking of the beer would start earlier and earlier (5pm at the beginning, all the way up till 2pm by the end of the summer). I had a great time in the lab and learned a lot.

My second year at BCIT was rough too. The workload got even worse that first term and I'm pretty sure we all hit our lowest lows. Just surviving became the name of the game and we did it well. Despite that, we had time to go play volleyball and support Josie's badminton tournament and fool around playing ultimate and snowball fights. We had some amazing memories and we didn't realize how fast time would fly until it was almost over.

And then Covid-19 hit. Assumed to be transferred from some sort of animal to humans in a Chinese wet market, racism and violence against Asians skyrocketed, just as the world shut down. Our last month at BCIT was canceled right before our eyes and we never got to celebrate finishing and surviving. Instead, classes went to online lectures and exams went to online formats and we stopped being able to see friends or go out or do anything really. Restaurants and attractions were shut down, maximum capacities and masks enforced and uncertainty everywhere. Talks for vaccines were hopeful, but I was skeptical about anything being ready until 2021. And I was right. As of today, all of us in the family have 1 dose of Moderna, although Mom is to get her second dose next week. Things are slowly opening up (provincial travel bans were lifted and movie theaters opened 2 weeks ago!) They're talking about what a post-covid world will look like, and I think everyone is grateful. In some ways, we lost a year and a half of our lives to this virus.

After finishing my time at BCIT, I was hoping to do a 4 month co-op placement abroad. Nothing of my applications turned out, but given covid, all travel ended up being restricted anyways. Not only that, there were no co-op jobs as every company in the world faced very uncertain economic and social times. I ended up taking April and May off and worked June and July at Collingwood again. Camp was different (lots of pool noodles and yoga mats) but in some ways, very much the same. I was grateful.

Despite the continued uncertainty of the next school year in a pandemic world, I was lucky to have the connections with the Hancock lab to allow me to do a full 8 month Honours Thesis with them. I took 4 classes per term on top of that and took them in the bioinformatics room on my laptop so I could be in the lab for the rest of the day. And boy, was I always there. 9am starts to 7pm finishes were not uncommon. Plus the 1.5 hour commute each way. Things were not easy. I thought BCIT was hard. 4th year at UBC trumps BCIT, easy. I was always stressed and strung out, I was constantly having to miss classes to do experiments (thank God for recordings) and at times, basic things refused to work (bacterial plating will be the death of me yet). The mandatory classes were all crappy and each have their own story that I may have to tell another time, but needless to say, I was not having a good time. I'm glad I made the effort to do an 8 month project, and in a way Covid made it both easier and harder. Easier because everything was recorded so my schedule was flexible (although I did my best to try to attend most lectures synchronously). Harder because I was in the lab more than I should have been and it meant some of my school work was compromised (thank God for Nabeel inviting me to his CHBE group). I survived, but I don't think I would have been able to go on much longer. Thank God for co-op and 8 months away from school.

In January, we were all on the hunt for co-op positions. Amazingly, I was super popular, scoring 6 different interviews of the 12 different applications I put in. I never got a Zymeworks invite though, which made me a little disappointed. But I think it worked out for the better because it meant I was more open when I was calling with Michelle. Meeting with Ting and Julien, we hit it off right away. I never get nervous for interviews and because of that, I feel like I'm really good at covering and clicking with interviewers. I asked lots of good questions and we were all laughing during that 1 hour interview. I got a call 2 days later from Michelle telling me I had gotten the job and I was so excited. It was the perfect fit. The chance to do more cell culture. The chance to do some research. The chance to maybe be hired on after grad. Working now, I feel really grateful for the opportunity. The company is a little odd, but our little CPD bubble is great to be a part of and I hope that one day we can make a difference.

I bought my first car on my first day of work - a 2012 Mazda 3 Hacthback with only 105k km. He's black and I've run him into the curb a few times, but he still looks super shiny (despite getting shat on within the first hour of being home) and I love him very much. The freedom of having my own car is amazing.

So why am I posting now? Well, I've been having some doubts and I needed a place to write it all out and I remembered this Tumblr. Reading back my old posts is a little sad because I started this Tumblr because I was sad. Things have been so much better in the last few years so I haven't been around. And make no mistake, I am so much happier than I was back then. But I've always learned while writing, so here I am to learn about myself and my feelings.

TBC

[uprootedandrelentless]

2020 Review  - Miraya

2020 was a year we’ll always remember. At first glance it’s the year of COVID-19, a global pandemic, Trump, BLM, shelter in place, businesses closing and so much loss and sickness. Future textbooks will need many pages to cover the history of this year. Zoomed in (get it?!) at the smaller scale of my little bubble it has also been a year of lots of virtual experiences, career change, working from home, and sweatpants. Obviously there were so much bigger and more monumental issues than my own but for the sake of this year in review I’m just zooming in on my day to day life. There is so much out of our control, that this year was a reminder to be grateful for our relationships. Despite the craziness of the year, there were many joyful and happy moments that I want to remember of 2020, so I’ll focus on those. 

It’s hard to think about this year pre-Pandemic/pre-March, but I am grateful that I squeezed in so much in the beginning of the year. In the first few months before lockdown, I luckily got to see so many friends and travel to all my favorite cities (London, New York and Palm Springs). Matt and I rang in the New Year in London, so we started 2020 there! I celebrated Claire’s Bachelorette party with 20 of her friends in Los Angeles, went to New York for my first Dessert Goals corporate event on Valentine’s Day, spoke at Alt Summit conference, and planned Clarissa’s bachelorette in Palm Springs. These trips feel like distant memories besides scrolling through photos on my phone. I can’t wait until we can travel again.

Since March my days have been much less glamorous, but there have still been moments I’ll treasure. Matt and I love watching movies, playing games and eating and luckily got to do a lot of these from the safety of our home. Some favorite moments of the year:

Snuggling on the couch with Matt and Rocky, watching movies and eating popcorn with Trader Joe’s ghee spray and truffle salt

Working out while playing Just Dance with Matt, our favorite song is “What Does The Fox Say”

Lots of cooking - using our air fryer, crockpot and Matt becoming a mixologist and creating a 50+ page Google Doc cocktail book

Every time we leave a grocery store with a giant cart full of food and I say “we will not starve”

Supporting small business with fun experiences at home, like Pop Up Mag in a Box and Mama’s Date Night Kit 

Playing Pandemic Legacy co-op game season 1 and 2

Celebrating my 30th birthday at Claire’s house and learning a choreographed dance of Aaron Carter’s I Want Candy with Claire, Evan, Matt

Creative socially distanced activities like picnics with my parents and friends, playing croquet with Matt’s family, renting out a nail salon for Claire’s birthday 

Virtual events like Six Degrees Society, monthly Pizza Party mastermind group, Dreamers & Doers, The Assembly entrepreneur group, my 30th Birthday with friends and family across the country 

Solo workouts and dancing on my rooftop in the middle of the day

Home improvements like painting our bookshelf blue, getting a new coffee table and buffet table 

Sleeping With Other People 5 year anniversary watch party with Rom Com Fest and IFC Zoom with Alison Brie and Jason Sudeikis 

Seeing Instagram Story photos of people across the country receiving Dessert of the Month boxes

Spending a week in Los Angeles in an Airbnb with a pool and hottub and going to our favorite restaurants while working from a different desk than our usual at home

Finding our wedding venue and booking a date for March 2022

Sadly the year has also included many not so great moments:

Closing of Eco Goods, my parent’s shop of over 20 years

Closing of The Assembly, my co-working space and slice of heaven in SF

Clearing out my LA storage unit of all my event supplies, many of which I just purchased in November for Dessert Goals and have sat unused since then

Getting Covid in May - luckily it was mild I just had a high fever and was achy and sick for a few days then quarantined for 10 days

Having to let my employee go because I couldn’t keep paying her

Having to cancel all of my festivals

Moments of feeling totally defeated and lost and not sure how to keep my business going

Shock at the country and that there are so many stupid and selfish people

In my little world, the hardest part about this year for me has been my struggle with my identity as an event planner when I can’t plan events. I’ve always felt such an association of what I do with who I am and when I suddenly am forced to stop doing what I love, with no end in sight, it’s been really tough, both for my identity and my business. I had my year all mapped out, three festivals, sponsors, and first I just postponed my events, and now they are cancelled until the foreseeable future. I tried some virtual events, launched a Dessert of the Month club, but nothing was enough. Dessert Goals and Rom Com Fest are so much about the IRL experience and I couldn’t figure out how to translate that at home. 

With a wonderful stroke of luck I was connected with someone in August looking for help with his event hosting software platform, Mixily, and he brought me on to do customer success and marketing. It’s the first “real job” I’ve had since 2014, and first time I’ve worked at a software startup. It’s been like MBA training, sink or swim. We have a small team all across the world and it’s been exciting getting to Slack and Zoom with others all working on the same project together. I’ve transformed a corner of our bedroom into an office (with a desk from The Assembly), bought a laptop stand, keyboard and mouse, and it’s the most official work setup I’ve had in years. Considering this crazy year and not being able to plan events, I am so  grateful I got this opportunity to keep working and flexing my muscles in a new industry. I’ve joined many new communities to connect with others in the software world, such as Indie Hackers, and have learned a lot of new perspectives about startups, that sometimes you’ll work on something for years and then have to call it quits. With Dessert Goals and Rom Com Fest I hope it’s not quits forever, but I’m coming to accept that they can be on the back burner for now. 

This year I turned 30. The biggest milestone the year has had in my mind is the Forbes 30 Under 30 list, which I never made it on. Obviously it would have been great, and I can’t say I’m not bummed that I didn’t, but I do know it’s not everything. Besides that, and wishing I could have a big party for my birthday which wasn’t totally possible, 30 hasn’t felt dramatically different yet. I know that I compare myself to others more than it is healthy, it’s hard to prevent it, especially when scrolling through Instagram. I hear from others as you get into your 30s you feel more confident in your skin, I hope this clicks for me and I quit the comparison game soon. I’ve started paying attention to my phone’s screen time and it’s pretty scary how many hours of each day I spend  on Instagram. I’m juggling accounts for my personal, Rom Com Fest, Dessert Goals and Mixily, so it’s a lot. A mix of research, posting, and inspiration, but it’s not a good use of time. Over the holidays I logged out of all my accounts, so if I wanted to check I had to go through the extra step of logging in, and it’s decreasing my scroll time drastically. I know Instagram is not a good use of time and adds to my comparison feelings, so it is something I want to decrease next year.

One of the new communities I joined because of Mixily, Reality Bites, asked me what three things I want more and less of in 2021. Here they are, plus a few more. 

More: travel, exercise, picnics, walks with friends, outdoor time

Less: stress, snacking, guilt, Instagram, comparing myself to others, sweatpants 

Last year I included lists of my favorite books, movies and TV shows of the year and want to keep the tradition. I’ve been tracking books in Goodreads, movies in Letterboxd, and TV shows in Notes. Here are my top picks of the year. 

Books

Last year I read 27 books and set a goal for 30 books this year. I ended up reading 32! My top 5:

Big Summer by Jennifer Weiner  

Always and Forever, Lara Jean by Jenny Han

Not Like The Movies by by Kerry Winfrey

Body Love Every Day: Choose Your Life-Changing 21-Day Path to Food Freedom by Kelly LeVeque

The Mom Test: How to talk to customers & learn if your business is a good idea when everyone is lying to you by Rob Fitzpatrick 

Movies

Matt and I watched A LOT of movies this year! Many older movies, including many from 1999 and a ton of Tom Hanks. Matt always creates his top 10 movie list of new release films. Here’s my top 2020 movies in alphabetical order: 

An American Pickle

Bad Education

How to Build A Girl

On The Rocks

Palm Springs

Save Yourselves!

Soul

The Half Of It

The One and Only Ivan

To All The Boys: P.S. I Still Love You

TV

In between movie watching, and while multitasking, I was able to watch quite a lot of TV shows this year, some with Matt and some on my own. Matt and I watched all the seasons of Veronica Mars which started a marathon of all other Rob Thomas (the creator of Veronica Mars) shows including Party Down and iZombie. Of new 2020 shows, here are some of my favorites, in alphabetical order: 

Dash & Lily

Dead To Me season 2

Emily in Paris

Love Life

Never Have I Ever

PEN15 season 2

Queen’s Gambit

The Bold Type season 4

The Home Edit

The Morning Show

Trinkets

At the end of my post last year I wrote of all the things I was looking forward to next year including 4 weddings and 3 festivals, all of which were cancelled. 2020 felt so planned out and yet everything was changed. I have no idea what next year will bring. It could feel exactly the same as this year, working from home and wearing a mask all year. Or we could be able to host events by summer. Every virtual event I’ve attended about the future of events seems like a similar level of uncertainty. It feels impossible to set goals or make plans for 2021. We just have to roll with the punches, be kind to one another, stay safe, wear our masks and ride this out.  

Here’s to a brighter and safer 2021!

-Miraya