Good morning! We’re doing something different, starting today: every morning, Kotaku will be running an open thread where you can talk about what you’re playing, how you’re helping each other during this tough time in the world, and how you’re doing.
I run the site’s weekly “What Are You Playing This Weekend?” post, where you all share your games and your weekend plans and put up with an inappropriate amount of Witcher 3 pics. But we wanted to curate a more regular space for staff and readers to be able to chat. Covid-19 is upending all of our lives and making a lot of us feel pretty isolated. Hopefully this will help folks feel more connected to each other. At the very least, we can unite in our frustration over slow-loading comments.
I’ll kick things off: I know a lot of people whose work has been affected by things shutting down, so I’ve been focusing my energy on helping out all the friends I can. I prepaid for a massage from a massage therapist friend (please don’t tell her, but I actually hate massages), and I ordered some things I’ve been meaning to buy from another friend’s local store to pick up once this is all over. I also donated to the Food Bank For New York City. I feel very fortunate that my job can easily be done remotely, so I’ve been trying to share some of my pay with everyone I can, as well as looking for other ways I can help.
I live above my favorite bar, so I promised to keep an eye on things while they’re gone, and I dropped off a big tip for the bartender. It can be a little weird to have a bar for a neighbor when I don’t drink anymore (oh, hey: I’m 300 days sober today!), but the owner and staff have become dear friends of mine, and I’m worried about what will happen to them during this time. It’s really quiet and strange not to have them around; it was hard to sleep last night without hearing their jukebox pumping through my floor. They gave me some lemons because they had a ton to get rid of, which I’ve turned into a pretty tasty lemon curd. I’ve been compulsively baking things lately, which is nice but getting a little, let’s say, weird.
So that’s me; how about you? How’s it going?