Opinions

Singer-songwriter Katherine Priddy wrote earlier this month on how the New Year brings a mixture of hope, expectations, and bleakness. Naturally, she has a beautiful and poetic take on the gravity and pressures of January which I can’t pretend to imitate, but in amongst her thoughts is her drive to “turn back and appreciate what [she] did in 2022”.

This stuck with me in a way I couldn’t immediately put my finger on. Mulling on it, I realised that a lot of parts of my life had came to a close all at once at the tail of last year, leaving me in a weird, transitional place. Meanwhile I entered 2023 rather disoriented; bleary-eyed and a little burnt out trying to neatly tie up my postdoc, the passage of the Bells never quite registered for me. I’ve had more time to myself since starting my new post, and thought it’d help me to reflect on some of the things I’ve completed – to turn back and appreciate 2022.

It’s strange, I think, how a sense of nostalgia for a virtual world (or point in time) arises from where we least expect it. A visual aesthetic, the feel of a specific piece of music, an outlook on the world and one’s place in its community. More and more, my thoughts have been drawn by these flashes towards the time I spent in Vana’diel—not a world I thrived in, but one that has nevertheless shaped me.