This year I am becoming worse in every way, except at Nancy Drew computer games

And you should too.

Screencap from theanimationcondemnation.com

Happy first week of the new year everyone! Last week I wrote a recap halfway in the week and in the new year I am not stopping the trend of this newsletter coming out late all the time (it used to promptly come out on Monday mornings, remember that? I sure don’t!). In fact, while I used to write down some New Year’s resolutions I have decided that I will not spend any energy actively bettering myself—I will only spend energy actively becoming worse, except at Nancy Drew computer games. 

Year in and year out I would use the start of the calendar year to “reset” myself and focus on being a bigger and better person. Sometimes this comes out in a goal of self-help books to be read, gossip to not be said, and foods that are healthy to eat. Not this year! There will not be any self-improvement this year, except when it comes at my ability to beat a Nancy Drew game without having to look up hints online.

Let’s be real: when a lot of people say you need to “work on yourself to become your best self” what they really mean is “you need to become palatable and also conventionally hot so I can tolerate your existence.” Fuck that! Become intolerable! Look like an absolute monster! Life is too short to have people like you, and saying what’s on your mind and eating what you crave when you want to eat it is way easier. Why do we as humans have to create more struggles on top of the struggles that already exist for us outside of our control? The only thing I’ll work harder at is finding all the clues for a complicated puzzle on a Nancy Drew computer game without asking my boyfriend Ned or my friends Bess and George for help.

I will admit though, I have had a moment of weakness and bought a Day Designer planner for 2023 already. This was done last week before I chose chaos as my direction for the new year. I even fucked up more than usual and got a more extensive planner than usual. I’m disgusted with myself. If I forget to do something because I didn’t write it down, that’s the thing’s problem, not mine. If I can’t remember a task to complete, it’s just not that important to me. The only note-taking I will be doing is the note-taking necessary to successfully beat a Nancy Drew computer game.

Ever since I was eight years old, I have been playing Nancy Drew computer games. They were difficult as hell to beat as a kid, and I thought that when I got older they would be easier to beat because I would have an adult brain (thus making me smarter). This is not true because with age also comes impatience and laziness. Why bother sorting a problem out yourself when you could look at UHS hints to help you out of a pickle? 

The only time I ever beat a Nancy Drew computer game was when I was twelve years old and destroyed my family computer by downloading music illegally (and thus, also a lot of viruses). The only thing we had to use all summer was a Windows 95 computer that was not connected to the internet. Luckily for me, Nancy Drew computer games numbered 1 through 9 were so old that they were totally playable on a Windows 95. I spent days just clicking through room after room trying to find my way because there was no help. We didn’t have phones back then. MTV’s The Real World played on the tv in the background. It was the first and last time in my life that I ever truly felt alive.

During this limbo period between Christmas and New Year’s I tried again to play a Nancy Drew computer game by myself without help. I played Last Train to Blue Moon Canyon, a game about Nancy and Fred and Joe Hardy (swoon!) and some other people on an old train to find treasure. I beat the game in a little over four hours with just the notes I took myself. What a rush! No drugs can beat the feeling of beating a Nancy Drew computer game without any help. Then my hubris got the best of me and I tried doing the same with The Curse of Blackmoor Manor, a game where a woman is gaslit into thinking she’s turning into a werewolf while living in a creepy English goth mansion. It was not so easy because there were some secret passages that were really hard to follow. I broke and looked up some hints. I’m still not done with the game.

But that was still back in 2022. This year we are looking for the easy way out to everything, except for what really matters: Nancy Drew computer games.