What Sticks
Every year in late November, right before the full Christmas assault hits, you reach this point where your brain’s already half-checked out but everyone else is suddenly an expert on what’s in and what’s out. What matters right now, culturally speaking. What you should care about. The lists pile up—trend predictions, year-end roundups, hot takes—and somewhere in there you’re supposed to figure out what you actually think.
Christmas does something to your judgment. The season is too much—same music looping, the decorations mandatory, everyone consuming and pretending it means something. Your taste, which felt solid in October, gets shaky. You start doubting whether you actually like what you like, or if you’re just not catching the signal everyone else seems to be picking up.
The thing is, most of it’s just noise. I mean that literally. The same five songs until they blur together, the pressure to have strong opinions about everything, the need to know exactly what’s cool right now and what’s over… it’s exhausting for no reason.
What actually matters is what lands with you when everything’s loud. What you find yourself reaching for when no one’s paying attention. That’s the real in and out—not what some expert says you should think, but what you keep coming back to. Most of the time those are completely different lists.