What made you happy — gaming or otherwise — in 2021?

It’s been a rough year. COVID hung around like that one person who won’t leave your house on Christmas, forcing you to stay up instead of mercifully crashing into unconsciousness — and, really, there was just a lot of stress and bad news all around. But I don’t want to dwell on, say, finding out the horror show that was going on at Activision Blizzard — and still is, don’t get it twisted, it’s far from over — or watching as we lose ground on COVID due to vaccine hesitancy or any of the other disasters from 2021. Instead, I want to try and take this in a positive direction.

What did you do that actually brought happiness to you in 2021? It can be anything. Maybe you got back into Animal Crossing New Horizons. Maybe you went for a really great walk. Maybe you got to see family and loved ones you missed, or picked up a new book you were really looking forward to reading, or saw Shang-Chi in a theatre — not something I can do right now, but more power to you if you can or are willing to. Did you start a new D&D campaign? Discover that you really like Octopath Traveler? Figured out a new recipe for quesadillas? If it brought you a moment of joy, or peace, or just let you disconnect for a while, please share it with us.

It’s important that we disconnect from the doom spiral from time to time. It’s stressful to try and keep track of it all — you want to stay informed and aware but if you just let the firehose of bad news slam into you all you end up doing is being extremely stressed out and unable to get any rest or function. We need things that are fun and enjoyable to help us recharge — it’s not selfish, it’s literally impossible to get through life choking on anxiety and stress 24/7. So I implore you, whatever it was — a video game, a book, a movie, some Halloween candy you picked up on sale in early November — if it made you happy in 2021, please share it with us. We could all use it.