- 31 Dec, 2025 *
I can’t stop thinking about one of the lines towards the end of UNBEATABLE. It’s a game that hit me like a truck, and happened to be made by a bunch of folks I have gotten to know, and so I felt extremely clocked by this feeling.
"It takes seven years to completely remake a person."
I’m paraphrasing here, and I promise it isn’t much of a spoiler until you also finish the game, but it’s something that wormed its way into my brain as I started to think about the year ending and a new one beginning.
Seven years is also the period of time that I’ve been thrust into the spotlight of the gaming world, and figuring out what that means for my life. It was a complete full-body shock that upended me in a lot of ways. For over thirty years prior I was content to sit at th…
- 31 Dec, 2025 *
I can’t stop thinking about one of the lines towards the end of UNBEATABLE. It’s a game that hit me like a truck, and happened to be made by a bunch of folks I have gotten to know, and so I felt extremely clocked by this feeling.
"It takes seven years to completely remake a person."
I’m paraphrasing here, and I promise it isn’t much of a spoiler until you also finish the game, but it’s something that wormed its way into my brain as I started to think about the year ending and a new one beginning.
Seven years is also the period of time that I’ve been thrust into the spotlight of the gaming world, and figuring out what that means for my life. It was a complete full-body shock that upended me in a lot of ways. For over thirty years prior I was content to sit at the back of the auditorium and be relatively unseen. Despite Celeste and everything that followed being a wonderful success, it also caused a lot of traumas that I realized I carried with me for a really long time. Seven years, in fact.
Sometimes I feel like I exist entirely within a photograph that was taken of me in 2018. There are children out there that discover my music in their favorite comfort game, and draw fan art of a photograph that was taken of me in 2018. I don’t have anything to really, like, draw from this observation.
But, as all holidays tend to do, separating myself from the endless onslaught of work gave me a chance to reflect on all the things that had been haunting me at the back of my brain and preventing me from moving on. There’s a hesitance, a feeling that you aren’t allowed past a threshold that has been drawn for you. I’ve been changing, all these years, and not allowing myself to really show why or how. The internals are moving around, reintegrating with new systems and ways of interlinking with the senses. I don’t know if any of of this makes sense.
It’s more of a personal thing, but I did feel like I reached a threshold. Too many things had changed internally without any of it being reflected in the outside world. It needed a place to escape.
I hate the concept of new year resolutions. It’s too easy to say things without meaning them. It’s too easy to simply rattle out the things you wish you could change about yourself. Something that feels different about closing out 2025 is that I don’t need to state anything. I don’t need to draw up a list and state my intent, because I’ve been doing that for seven years, bunched up taut in a sealed door of "I should make this plan." "I should do this." Too few things slipped out under the threshold. So it feels like 2026 is less a year of wants and more a year of doing. Not letting my executive dysfunction control me. Not letting the anxiety prevent me from doing what I am actively feeling in the moment. I’m done with that.
So, yeah. Seeya 2025 Lena. Farewell 2018 Lena. Let’s just do shit.