Winter Solstice and the Future of Pause Menu

Legacy Exclusive: An Open Letter to the Future of Pause Menu

To the future of Pause Menu,

to the flame that has not yet been lit,

to the reader who has not yet arrived,

and to the versions of ourselves still waiting in the wings of the year—

I am writing to you from the longest night.

The world outside my window is folded into dark blue, the kind of winter shade that is spilled across the horizon. I write in the dark, the glow from my screen my only source of light. Its glow is small, but it is honest. And sometimes honesty is the first kind of light we are given.

This is the solstice.

The year’s great inhale.

The night that lingers not to discourage us but to steady us.

The pause before the page turns.

And Pause Menu, in all its future shapes, begins here. . . in the dark.