[Natasha is a 22 year old adult-child from Sydney, Australia. She had to quit her jobs, uni, and move back in with family this year due to chronic illness, but damn it she’s still trying her best.]
Apps and online services
- All streaming services
- All social media
- Discord
- Rain Rain
For context, a lot of this list is going to be based on the fact that I essentially not left the house since June. Not to get political, but Australia has one of the most mismanaged covid outbreaks in the world at the moment, and Delta wasn’t much better. I’ve always been a heavy online user, but this year took it to a new level. All of these kept me distracted, kept me connected to the ones I loved, allowed me to make new friends and new memories and to not feel so alone. Special shoutout to Rain Rain, which I discovered deep into the lockdown. When the world felt unsafe, it made me feel comforted.
Online content creators
- Maddie Dragsbaek
- BTS
- Gab Smolders
- Jacksepticeye
- Watcher Entertainment
- Baumgartner Restoration
- Cheyenne Barton
- Jisoupy
As a long time YouTube user, we have some repeat offenders here: this year is my 7 years with Jacksepticeye, 3 years with Baumgartner Restoration, 5 years with Cheyenne Barton, 6 years with BTS and 2 years with Jisoupy. I know they’ll always be there for me to cheer me up. Maddie Dragbaek helped with the beginning of my body positivity journey and Gab Smolders’ streams kept me company during lectures and long stretches of empty time. I’m a long-time watcher (haha geddit) of Buzzfeed Unsolved, but this year I moved over to their new channel Watcher Entertainment and started watching some of that. They kept me company when the lockdown was over but I was housebound my chronic illness.
Shows and podcasts
- Loki
- The Witcher
- Made in Abyss
- Dungeons and Daddies
Loki came out at the perfect time for; a solo series for one of my top 3 MCU characters right as our Delta lockdown began. It kept me going week to week. The Witcher is my favourite fantasy series since Lord of the Rings, so it gets an automatic add. Made in Abyss reminded me why I loved anime and its soundtrack brought me to tears, and Dungeons and Daddies (not a BDSM podcast I promise) helped me bond with my mum who I was on the other side of Sydney from, first on my commutes to work and later through the long nothingness of winter.
Movies
- Spider-Man: No Way Home
- Inside
- Dune
I kind of dropped the ball on movie watching this year, but to be honest I simply didn’t have the attention span for it. I don’t think No Way Home is an excellently crafted movie, but I’ve never had a more fulfilling movie-going experience than seeing it on opening day. Inside gave me a (mostly) healthy outlet for my pandemic fears and a great cleaning playlist, and Dune reminded me why I fell in love with movies and the craft of making them in the first place, when I first watched Mad Max: Fury Road and realised this is what movies can make me feel about the art form.
Video games
- Animal Crossing: New Horizons
- Stardew Valley
- The Last of Us
Yes, I’m very aware none of these are new games. But all of these kept me sane in one way or another. Me and my best friends would carve out a couple times a week (sometimes every day at the peak of lockdown) for at least 2 hours and sit down and tend our farm on Stardew Valley together. I’ll spare you the details of my chronic illness, but I was not only house-bound, but I was room-bound for a little bit there – restarting my Animal Crossing island and having that routine of coming on every day to find my fossils and pick my weeds kept me going through that week, kept me engaging with life instead of sleeping the hardship away. And some of my new best friends I met this year I met through The Last of Us. We would set up daily sessions where we would watch YouTube videos of someone play through the whole game, chatting and laughing and poking fun at the player’s small blunders along the way. I had talked to these people before then, but this time I spent with them really solidified them as some of my closest friends.
Live entertainment
- Candlelight concert
- Hamilton
- Student production of Metamorphosis
Before everything went to shit, I went to a candlelight concert of film soundtracks. I planned and bought tickets for my whole family to go. In a time where me and my sister have both moved out., having that family evening that was something I suggested was everything to me. I also saw a student production of Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis; sometimes I forget how much I love live theatre. Recently I saw Hamilton, something I’ve been wanting to do for 5 years. It was everything I wanted it to be and more.
My 2021 quotes
“Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare”
Audre Lorde
“and I said to my body. Softly. ‘I want to be your friend.’ It took a long breath. And replied ‘I have been waiting my whole life for this.”
Nayyirah Waheed
My 2022 quotes
“Fall in love. Maybe it doesn’t have to be with someone. Fall in love with music, art, dancing in the dark, car rides at 1am, the glistening of the stars, the colors of the sun as it rises, the smell of flowers, the feeling of adrenaline that takes over your whole body and suffocates your lungs with joy, good friends who bring out your best, silence, noise, fall in love with the little things that make you feel most alive and find purpose. Fall in love with life.”
A.S.B.
“Nothing lasts forever, right?”
“No. Not even pain.”
“That’s a relief”
EJ Chong
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