Week 3 Journal Entries

Below here is the third week of a month-long journal that I kept after deciding that gaming was no longer going to be a part of my life. I will do my best to keep this all organized by week, so there should be one more much like this posting. After this my posts will either be a collection of random thoughts from different days, or just singular postings. Hopefully you all find this informative, enjoyable, or at least can identify with some of my descriptions or feelings in some way.

April 24, 2006

I can honestly say that that since I was young, I have been a dreamer, and much of life has been lived within waking dreams. My imaginative mind has taken me to distant lands, traveled perilous roads, and seen cities that both horrify and enliven the creative spirit. I guess that would explain why I’m such a fan of literature/poetry and gaming, because it’s a veritable playground of imaginative possibility. Gaming especially took me to a whole new level of role-playing (pun intended) and gave me the visual embodiment of what I commonly had traipsing about in my mind. I think that gaming really opened my eyes to the fact that there is so much potential and possibility in the human mind, and I admired those people who had the foresight and ability to make those dreams real for all of us that love gaming. Much like one would admire a poet or author for their ability to communicate through words, we gamers esteem those who develop our games.

There are times when I feel quite detached from the side of myself that strives for the challenge of creating a character, planning their lifespan and leveling matrix, reconfiguring all the technical portions of skills and attributes applicable to their development at each level and then finding the best weapons, armor and accessories necessary to make them an unstoppable force. I loved that level of detailed organization and strategy that came with an RPG, and not having an outlet on the creative side to accomplish that same thing is hard sometimes. Hopefully I can find a replacement for that, and perhaps that will eventually transfer over into the written word, but I just don’t know when the right timing is. Hopefully this journal will help steer me in the right direction though.

April 25, 2006

I think that I’ve been enjoying this exercise of journalizing, and I’ve tried to make the whole process a little more interesting by adding some color to the background, borders and some pictures as well. While these serve little function other than for aesthetics, its good fun for me to spruce things up a little for the reader and have a good presentation. Anyhow, this has been a good outlet and reflective tool thus far, and I hope that it will help me in dealing with the new habits that I’m trying to battle or add to my repertoire.

Julie has seemed much better since I stopped gaming, and also appears to be happier, and that makes me feel good. That constant tension and guilt was hard at times, as was trying to convince myself that everything was okay. The problem was that I was allowing my relationship to go by the wayside in order to play a game that I really liked, and my justification for doing so was that I wanted to. I felt that Julie should just allow me to play according to our agreement and be a little more independent while I finished (this could have been a year’s worth of time though), and then after that things would turn back to normal. However, not only was I putting my own needs before Julie’s, I was doing so on behalf of a game. Obviously this isn’t right. Now, things could have gone very differently and Julie could have had no issue with me playing at all, but the fact is that she did, so unfortunately the game had to go.

Everyday that I wake I wonder what is happening in that game and get curious what it would be like to get in there again and continue where I left off (Hakkan is still sitting at the hippogriff flight stand in Stormwind City). I can’t seem to win though, because I feel guilty about just quitting without finishing, and every part of my mind is constantly turning around images of past exploits, dangers and missions that I worked on. In fact, I can remember almost every mission sitting in my quest menu and what was required to complete it, which is funny because I have to write everything else in my life down so that I don’t forget! One of my favorite phrases (I cannot recall the source at this time) is thus: “I have an endless capacity for useless information.” Anyhow, I’ve been learning a good deal about landscaping thus far, so it feels good to actually learn this stuff, because prior to doing my own yard I knew nothing. It makes me feel a little more like a man to have this background now, and I know that Julie admires my ardent dedication to learning landscaping and working hard on completing our home with her invaluable assistance.

April 26, 2006

Well, today I’m doing okay, but Julie and I bought the new Final Fantasy VII movie for me last night, and that was great to watch. However, watching that made me think about video games quite a bit, and I even made a joke about how I should have replayed Final Fantasy VII (the RPG) prior to watching the follow-on movie. She just gave me the upraised eyebrow in an affectionate way, but it was fun too see the reaction anyway. There isn’t a whole lot to say for today, since I’ve been so preoccupied with work and landscaping today, so I think that I’ll make this a short entry. As always, I’m still thinking about gaming and WOW, but that’s not much of a surprise. Every time I get on my home PC I hearken back to the days when I was logging onto the WOW server to continue moving forward with my game. A lot of good times will never come to fruition now, but that is just the way of things.

April 27, 2006

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how much I feared the loss of freedom and choice I had when I was single, and how marriage is such a different dynamic. One of the most difficult areas for me to reconcile in being married was the transition from single life into the marriage life, because they are so mutually oppositional to one another when you think about it. Being single means that the majority of what you do is self-centric, because your responsibility is truly to yourself, and while single people obviously think and act on other’s behalves (e.g. not everything is “self”), the majority of their concern lies in fulfilling their own needs. However, married life entails the submission of “self” and the embracement of the “other”, or a “we” conceptual view of life. In other words, your interests, wants, desires and needs are no longer mutually exclusive of your spouse, and this means that you invariably have to submit and resign to a more companionable approach to needs fulfillment. In short, one has to consider the other person before themselves and determine if their behaviors and actions will negatively impact their marriage. That can be quite an undertaking, especially when some of your interests suddenly find themselves in diametrically oppositional terms to that of your spouse.

Now, obviously I had a point in mentioning the content in this first paragraph, and the applicability finds itself entwined in the gaming habit we have been discussing for the past three weeks. Prior to Julie and I getting married I sold all of my RPG’s, because I knew that the time needed to play them would be reduced such a great deal, but I did keep a few of them. I also knew that Julie wasn’t particularly into games, so I thought that selling them would let her know that I was willing to make adjustments and sacrifices for her. However, there were a few games that I did keep, simply due to the fact that I wanted to play a couple before selling off my PS2. After I finally sold the PS2, Julie was so proud and appreciative of me for letting that part of my life come to a close, and surprisingly enough there was a part of her that pitied that decision as well, because she knew how much gaming meant to me.

Once WOW came into the marriage however, that sympathy and attempting to empathize with me slowly dissipated. WOW became the ice that forms in the cracks of a rock and slowly creates small fissures and splits, which when left unchecked, destroy the very fabric and makeup of that rock. Unfortunately, the ice was WOW and the rock was my marriage. It was literally driving a frozen wedge between us, and the very air in our home was becoming the frigid, artic winds of the north that bite and shock all in their wake. We were having issues from my need to play WOW, my incessant thought processes and planning in my off hours, and the constant wanting to share my gaming experiences with Julie. I think that I realized her frustrations the entire time, but was blinded by my own needs, which was to keep playing WOW until I finished. Hey, Julie would just have to learn to fend for herself and find something to do, because I had a game to play, and not even she was going to come between me and WOW!

Well, as it ended up, I think that the Lord probably stepped in to intervene on her behalf, because I sure wasn’t doing my job there. Instead of helping us reach a permanent agreement, I received a Christ-like cuff up the side of my head, and then the game was gone quicker than I could say, “but….” Anyhow, the issue ended up resolving itself, but I’m left to deal with the aftermath of that. Julie has been supportive of me (as much as she can anyway), and I appreciate that, but for the most part I have to bear the brunt on my own. Each day is more of an internal struggle with wanting to play, or just catching a glimpse from a website, and while this is difficult, it’s better than reenacting the Battle of Thermopylae in our home over a game. As much as I love gaming, some things just aren’t worth the consequences they entail to keep in our lives, especially when the wages come with a price we’re not willing to pay. At times this causes a little internalized resentment and frustration in having to make such a decision, but more often that not the right choices are the most difficult, aren’t they?

April 28, 2006

Today sure has been a tough one for me, especially since the weather is bad and I’m stuck inside. This would be prime gaming hours while the weather sucks, but alas I find myself writing and thinking about games, not playing them. Julie seems to be less and less patient with me when it comes to gaming discussions, or even looking at something that I might use for this journal. This is of course frustrating for me, since I’m the one having to deal with not playing games anymore, but I think that she feels like I should be over it by now. She said yesterday that she’s tired of hearing about games at all, so it looks like I need to be more selective in her engagement of topics with me. I won’t hide anything from her, but I’m not going to just come out and share things either. Julie also seems to be under the impression that looking at anything RPG-related just makes things hard for me, and maybe it does make things difficult for a short time, but I can’t seem to not want too see those images or short movies on the web sites. I am drawn to these places like a bird is to the air, not to mention that I’ve been using them to make my journal a little more my own style, which I think is important as well.

The bottom line is that I’m always going to like fantasy in all it forms (i.e. books, movies, games, etc.), so Julie will just have to accept that part of me. I’m not playing the games anymore, so I feel like my needing too see some images here and there should be okay. The longing to play is there without them, they just stimulate those feelings to an elevated level, and this is probably where Julie finds fault in viewing the WOW website. This isn’t to say that we’ve been arguing of fighting over it as a source of conflict, but that we discussed it last night, and now it has me thinking. Somehow my life without gaming makes me feel less exciting, less cultured and less analytical than I once was, but I’m sure that no one else would say the same. That’s the nice part about one’s feelings; they can never be wrong in of themselves, just the underlying beliefs that engender them.

Anyhow, it is normal to feel inadvertent anger over the loss of WOW? I don’t want to be upset about a stupid game, but what can I do about that either? I really just need Julie to continue being there for me and give me the support that I need. 20 years is a very long time to roll back the clock on, so having a great wife like Julie at my side has made things a lot easier. What’s really helped though is the fact that I have a yard to landscape, so that takes us almost all my free time. Can you imagine the inner struggle that would have ensued over trying to reconcile my gaming with the yard work? That would have been painful for both Julie and I, because she would have been able too see right through me (I can be a little transparent at times). Anyway, that’s about it for today.

April 29, 2006

Today will be short, as I’ve had very little time to think about gaming today, not to mention that there just wasn’t the time to consider my feelings while working in the yard again. That seems to be taking up such a great deal of my free time right now, so not having the distraction of games (biting my tongue for this comment) is sort of a blessing at this juncture. Heck, I’m lucky if I can stay awake to read in the evening right now, because I’m just so weary from working all day and then coming home to work on the yard. It gets you tired real quick when you actually work with your whole body. I mentioned to Julie today how much easier gaming was, because at least I could relax while getting mentally tired. That was so much easier than yard work, which can really just take it out of you. I also seem to remember telling her something about how I hadn’t planned on buying a home or getting married, due specifically to the fact that they really just take up too much time that could have been spent reading or playing games. Imagine though; now I’m married and have this wonderful wife, but I still manage to screw that up at times as well. Fallibility stinks!

April 30, 2006

Well, this weekend was very productive, but no so in the thinking about games department. There just wasn’t ample time for reflection, which stinks, because I think that this is important for me to do. However, great headway was made on the yard, so I can’t complain there. Anyway, not too much to say again this evening since the weekend was so busy, but I figure that this next week will be much more interesting. There is always more to talk about when I have the drive to work ahead of me, because that gives me some preparation and planning time for what I want to say. The weekends are always just too rushed and busy to come up with anything truly worthwhile, at least that’s how it feels at times. Believe me, I haven’t forgotten just how much I’m missing out on in WOW, and I still envy those lucky 5 million or so that have the opportunity too see that game through to its logical conclusion.

Oh, what I wouldn’t give for the chance to finish that game, but if someone offered me two hours of time, I wouldn’t even want it, because it would be too hard. I mean, two hours would be more like ritualized torture than a concession, because I would know that anything I accomplished would mean nothing, so why even think on it? That game is gone for good and there is nothing that I can do or say to bring it back. I very much doubt that I will ever be allowed to play another game, even if I really wanted to, but I wonder if this is because this is what Julie thinks is best for her, or what’s best for me? I want to believe that it’s for the better of us both, but I also know that she just wants to protect me (and our relationship of course) from those things that distract my mind from what needs my attention. Julie needs a man that is there mentally and physically the majority of the time, and my proclivities toward drifting through silent worlds of fantasy sort of run counter to those needs. Change is always hard, but I get to keep her, so I can’t really complain to much, now can I?

The Harbinger