My Year End Retrospective (2020)

 ... So how was your year...?

It's no secret that 2020 was an absolute dumpster fire of a year. Racial tensions came back to boiling point after the senseless murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor from the very people who were supposed to protect them (#blacklivesstillmatter), we nearly had WWIII, Brexit has now been put into place which I'm sure won't screw us over whatsoever (sarcasm), celebrities I once admired such as J.K. Rowling and Sia proved themselves to hate trans people and autistic people respectively, we lost a fair few celebrities including Black Panther himself, Chadwick Boseman and of course, there's this little thing called COVID-19 that brought the world to a halt and proved more than ever just how incompetent leaders Donald Trump and Boris Johnson were. At least Trump's finally on his way out... (DON'T SCREW THIS UP JOE BIDEN!).

Unfortunately, on a personal level, things weren't that much better. I had to deal with grief for the first time as I lost my maternal grandmother to leukaemia and my cat to old age, both of whom I miss dearly. My stepfather had sepsis in the arm which disrupted our lives even before lockdown, lockdown itself prevented me from seeing my friends, my theatre group and my job (outside of March and December) and because of the above factors, I was on able to go on holiday. In addition to this, I learned just how bad I really was with women, especially when the topic of sex gets involved which not only made me doubt if I deserve a relationship but even if I was a good person until recently. As a result, my mental health took a gigantic nosedive as I got overwhelmed with stress, anxiety, depression, self-loathing and even PTSD after a traumatising period with a former stepfather. 

Like with all years though, it wasn't all bad. Before lockdown, I was able to do a show with my drama group which I haven't done in four years and it was so much fun to do again; I made new friends, one of whom I have an eerie amount of things in common with; our kitchen has been redone and looks better than ever, I surprisingly had a good Halloween despite me being the only person in my household to celebrate it (which proved to be advantageous as I could celebrate it quietly in peace) and I managed to watch a lot of new shows, many of which are among my favourites such as Community, The Good Place, Cobra Kai and The Mandalorian. Even Doctor Who had a solid year with a decent season to set things off and the fantastic Emily Cook organising those lockdown tweetalongs, short stories and short films and yes, I and many fans are grateful for her. 

And I guess at the end of the day, I finally got to man up, and it's not just because I grew a beard. This year encouraged me to step up and be more responsible. I learned new DIY stuffs when helping build a new summer home and tearing down our old kitchen, I learned to cook full meals which have gone down very well and at last, I managed to get a job and thus, my own income. Whether or not that job will last under the circumstances remains to be seen but still, I see that as an absolute win. 

So where am I going next? Well it's difficult to say as I have no idea what the next day will bring since the government can't make up their minds on how locked down we are but what I need to do is to sort my mental health out. I need to assure myself that I am safe in my own home and to own up when things get too much. I also hope that I have enough self-awareness not to freak out the next woman I fancy so I can earn the right to be with her. And above all, I need to maintain contact with my friends. I honestly don't know what I would do without them, especially as everyone's mental health is getting really bad. 

Here's hoping 2021 is at least a little better. Until then, fare thee well good people of the internet!

My Weird Holiday Tradition

I've noticed that the last few blogs I wrote were, well, rather gloomy so I thought I'd offset that with something completely ridiculous. Well, it might be ridiculous... we'll see. Anywho, this is the story of the Holiday Timetable.

A quirk of mine is that I don't like watching Christmas stuff unless I'm watching it in December or for the first time because that way, I get the full impact. This also applies to Halloween stuff as well. Unfortunately, this presented a problem because I had so much stuff to watch both on TV and on the Internet that it was impossible to keep track of them. So on December 2016, I concocted the Christmas TimeTable and comparing it to what it became, it was rather primitive. What I did was that on each day of December, leading up to Christmas Day, I did one thing of one of the following five categories: 'Nostalgia Critic' as I was (and for some reason still am) a fan of his work and he had enough Christmas reviews to fill out the entire month. The second category was Christmas specials where I watched different Christmas specials of 'The Big Bang Theory' and 'How I Met Your Mother' as well as other Christmas films such 'The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe', 'Die Hard' (Yes it is a Christmas film!) and a favourite of mine, 'The Muppet Christmas Carol'. Category 3 was reserved for the 'Doctor Who' Christmas specials with Christmas Day reserved for the current Christmas special at the time ('The Return of Doctor Mysterio'). The fourth category was dedicated to internet specials from YouTubers such as Caddicarus (whose work I got into that year), JonTron, Tomska, Epic Rap Battles of History and others. Finally, the fifth category was reserved for my Joel Mole page where I answered questions throughout December. 

In case you couldn't tell, this was devised on the 6th December 2016 so it was pretty barren to start with. Likewise, I highlighted the numbers to keep track of the days similar to an advent calendar and so I could keep track as to what came next. I also made sure to order it from least Christmassy to most Christmassy so I can start getting excited for Christmas again. In that regard, it worked as the following year, I found myself looking forward to doing that again. However, another thing happened in 2016: I celebrated Halloween for the first time ever. Therefore, I decided to do a Halloween Timetable. 

As you can see, this had less content than the Christmas Timetable with the Halloween specials (again from 'The Big Bang Theory' and 'How I Met Your Mother') reserved for the final week as there wasn't enough to fill out the entire month. Once again, I kept things confined to the Nostalgia Critic and the Internet and if memory serves me correctly, I watched them all at night for the full effect. It was a decent time though it was definitely a WIP. 

Next was the Christmas Timetable Mark 2:

In this one, I posted my (poorly aged) unpopular opinions for my Joel Mole page and in addition to that, I found myself reviewing Christmas songs on my personal Facebook page which I, and many others, enjoyed. The Nostalgia Critic, Doctor Who and other Christmas specials were largely unchanged save for some new additions from the previous year and 2017. However, the internet section had more content including a day dedicated to Christmas shorts which I have since labelled 'The Christmas Free-For-All'. This turned out really well that year and I believe this was the year where I divided it up between mornings and evenings so it will not be too stressful. 

Still, the best was yet to come as I found myself facing a new conundrum: with Halloween and Christmas now full to the brim with content, I found myself exceedingly bored in November as it was just me waiting for Christmas so I decided to figure out what content I could watch at that time. I then realised that as I watched more shows and YouTube channels, I found that both the Christmas and Halloween Timetables were overflowing so I decided to put the leftovers there. In addition to this, in 2017 I found the perfect day to watch the Halloween/Christmas classic 'The Nightmare Before Christmas': the 15th November. Thus, that became 'Holiday Hybrid Day', a day where I watch things that combine Christmas with either Halloween, Thanksgiving or both. This tradition carries on to this day.

Other sections include 'Halloween leftovers' for the aforementioned overflow (1st-3rd November), Nostalgia Critic Commercials (which is usually the best thing he produces all year and comes out every November) combined with Dominic Noble's 'November Nanos' and any Bonfire Night content from Caddicarus were watched on the 4th-12th November. Then it was the Holiday Hybrid itself from the 13th to the 15th November. Then it was Doctor Who related content, as the 23rd November was its anniversary, which spanned from the 16th to the 23rd November. Finally, it was leftover Christmas stuff that didn't quite make the Timetable due to it not being Christmassy enough (24th-30th November) including Doctor Who episodes that featured Christmas but were not explicitly Christmas specials. 

All of these were divided into two categories: 'Nostalgia Critic' and 'Everything Else'. As you will see later, this format didn't really last:

The Halloween Timetable was greatly improved with a new category dedicated to scary Doctor Who episodes (something which I attempted the previous year but failed) including new episodes every Sunday which spanned all three timetables. I also mixed the internet specials with TV specials since some content from the previous year didn't make it to that year due to lack of enjoyment. This ended up solving the overflow problem as I could simply leave out Halloween and Christmas content I got sick of. Similar to the Christmas free-for-all, I included a Halloween free-for-all on the 1st October. This later proved to be a mistake as that gave me more Halloween vibes than any other time of the month. I also made sure to note down the days each date was on so I could adapt my timetable viewings around the day's events (such as lectures and clubs).  

As for the Christmas timetable, it was expanded even further, with even more TV and internet specials (including a second free-for-all for Doctor Who Christmas Videos), a section for Roblox Christmas games (yes I know, I'm an adult who plays Roblox but there are some legitimately great games on there), a new Joel Mole advent event where I review Christmas adverts and even more Christmas songs. Thanks to the morning/evening divide, I got through it fine though that Christmas wasn't as enjoyable as for the first time in 13 years, there was no Doctor Who Christmas special and the whole thing just felt weird. 

Now for last year. The first major change I made was putting all of the timetables on one document which made things a lot easier to track. The second big change was including a timetable for September since that became the most boring month of the year in anticipation of everything that came after it. This is where I watched random Doctor Who episodes, most of which came out in September, and its spin-off 'Class' towards the end (since it had back-to-school vibes despite the fact that I have graduated since then). The Nostalgia Critic was confined to the back half of the month since he didn't have enough enjoyable content to last the month. The third and final category was reserved for my favourite Caddicarus videos. 

It did help things though it still felt slow compared to the rest of the year. Next was the Halloween Timetable, now with four categories since the internet and TV specials were finally separated as I watched more shows and included The Simpsons into the mix. I also put the Halloween Free-for-All on the 31st October where it belonged and subsequently salvaged my Halloween as by then, I got sick of the Halloween season. I had since ceased doing them all at night despite my attempts to do so since I was working as a kitchen porter at the time and it made things impossible, especially with the Doctor Who two-parters. 

The most changed timetable was November as I had finally found a sufficient way to divide them properly. I also added a Thanksgiving category to all sections but the Christmas section. The first category was dedicated to Bonfire Night (1st-5th November) as I had found more content including 'V for Vendetta' for the 5th. The next was dedicated to Remembrance Day (6th-11th November) where I also included internet videos released in November. Some of the content was dedicated to Remembrance Day such as Doctor Who: The Family of Blood for the 11th. Next was the Holiday Hybrid again, now extended to the 12th-15th November. This was largely unchanged except that more content was dedicated to the Holiday mish-mash. Next was Doctor Who (16th-23rd November), now combined with the NC commercial specials since it was more likely to come out later in the month rather than earlier. I also included Jontron's Starcade series (where he reviewed Star Wars games)... suffice to say I didn't enjoy it enough for it to return this year.  Finally, there was the Christmas preview (24th-30th November) which now included sitcom specials that weren't quite Christmassy enough since Friends was added to the mix. This format proved to be way more successful and I will be using it again this year. 

Finally, the Christmas timetable was expanded yet again and this time, I finally realised I went too far. The Joel Mole content was dedicated to Star Wars reviews (both the movies and fan films) in anticipation of 'The Rise of Skywalker' and the Christmas songs came one last time before I finally gave up due to lack of enjoyment or good Christmas songs. MrTARDISReviews, the YouTuber responsible for my passion for film criticism, also did a series where he reviewed every Dalek story of Doctor Who, a tradition he intends to do with another recurring baddie this year (my money's on The Master). This was on top of the Roblox content (which proved to be way less enjoyable due to the iffy games I selected), Doctor Who, TV and Internet (whose free-for-alls basically spanned at several points throughout the month which I do not regret since they help divide the Christmas content). Luckily there was a new Christmas special on Christmas Day this year... it was just for Gavin & Stacey instead of Doctor Who. I also tried doing a New Year Timetable for the rest of December but it fell through and I kept my New Year content to New Year's Eve and New Year's Day. 

Finally, there's the Year of Hell, 2020. This time, I decided to go (more-or-less) year-round, targeting days of significance such as Valentine's Day, St. Patrick's Day, Mother's Day, Easter Sunday and Father's Day where I watched content related to each of these days. I probably won't return to Mother's/Father's Day but I will return to the other three and maybe even expand Valentine's Day to the first 14 days of February (as I have attempted to do but failed in the past). The categories were entirely random to fit the amount of content available.

I also included something for August since in 2019, I started a 'Summer Checklist' where I had different summer traditions such as Carnival, Party-in-the-Park Fireworks, the annual holiday to Dorset and Roblox theme parks/water parks (all of which were and still are pretty darn amazing!). However, this year, because of COVID-19 and other personal reasons, most if not all of these traditions were cancelled. All I had left was Roblox and beach-themed episodes of my favourite shows so I decided to make a special timetable just for that. It got mixed results as my mistake was combining the Roblox content and beach-episodes onto the first half of the month, leaving the second half pretty slow and miserable. Next year, I will definitely split them apart, especially with a more possible holiday breaking things up. I will divide them into beach-episodes, films I watch every summer and Roblox games. One tradition I'm glad I started this year was watching American Grafitti on the 31st August since that was a perfect goodbye to summer (as well as a great film).

September was largely unchanged except for the addition of Marshal Does Stuff's Reddit Videos, something which I marathoned day by day last September but had failed to note down. I watch one of these every morning. This year, there was enough content to fill out the entire month and as he has moved on from Reddit videos, it has set in stone. Next year, instead of Doctor Who content, I will instead watch 'The Sarah Jane Adventures' from beginning to end. Other than that, this was the fastest September yet. At the time of writing this, I have yet to complete the September Timetable.

As for where the rest of the Timetable holds, Halloween and November are largely unchanged save for the removal of Starcade, the addition and removal of even more shows, the additions of movies every Monday in October, a Doctor Who free-for-all and the removal of Starcade in favour of more Christmas 'runners up'. Christmas itself has finally seen the removal of Christmas songs and as _____Cember and Joel Mole's Advent Events are TBC, there are only four categories. I may attempt to watch every Star Wars movie from the 1st-11th December but due to their length, I don't see that coming through. I also took the liberty of putting the free-for-all content into a separate document as it was getting too big to be a part of the Timetable. 

Whether or not this will work remains to be seen, especially as I will no longer be furloughed from November onwards but Lockdown 2: Electric Boogaloo might be on the horizon. This could all change. As of right now, I still have these to look forward to:

And yeah, I'm fully aware that I am the only person alive mad enough to do something like this. This is definitely me at my most Sheldon for sure. But I enjoy it and will continue to enjoy it until such time as I either get sick of it or I'm unable to do it. This is just a bit of fun. Have a great holiday season and until the next time, fare thee well good people of the internet!