Perhaps I was just in the right frame of mind, but I was reflecting on how over-exposed I allow myself to be to those things I enjoy. For as long I can remember I’d played video games nearly every day usually much more than I should have. This also extends to film, TV or music. While games require participation to function these others do not so I could always fill my time with them even if it’s little more than ambient noise. Thus, over years this became less a conscious choice and more a habit. Having, over the years, indulged in alcohol and seen what happens when over-indulged it made sense to ‘quit’ playing games, watching movies, or listening to music just as I might quit drinking alcohol. By the time I had decided to do this several days had gone by being busy with my daughter, maybe making the choice easier. With my wife out of town for work I became a solo dad and couldn’t afford to indulge. When she came back I could but realized I shouldn’t. That was at the beginning of December and while I now decompress at the end of the day with some TV and listen to music during my morning exercise, I still haven’t played video games.
It’s funny for me to think that this may be the first time I’ve spent so long away from gaming since I was maybe a child. Even in my roughest college semesters putting in 80-hour weeks I found time to play then, but now I don’t. This isn’t going to be an indictment of gaming but an examination of ‘breaking the habit’ of playing and what it’s like, for me.
First and foremost, I’d like to point out my mental and emotional stability is obviously not as stable as one would like but I do try to do better. That said I’d been playing games consistently since I was young, began smoking weed in high school, and began drinking in college. For all that time it might be said I was distracting and self-medicating myself and after a week or two without it my head felt like a room full of people shouting over each other. Once that started the first few days were the worst. My attention was constantly jumping, and I had trouble remembering what I was doing. Breathing exercises, journaling, and keeping a to-do list helped in the beginning (and still does) but after a while instead of maybe 30 voices it was down to three. Then two. Now it’s usually just a single line of thought with occasional interjection. I’ll try to avoid any armchair psychology or speculation but here are my thoughts.
I’m finally growing up. After an extended adolescence through my late 20’s I’ve finally had the self-control and will to try and be an adult…. all the time, as opposed to just when things need to be done. I have a schedule for when I exercise, when and what I eat, and never sit down to rest if there’s ‘easy’ labor to be done around the house. ‘Easy’ labor being started laundry, folding it, running the dishwasher, picking up clothes and other things out of place, etc. Basically, anything that takes less than five minutes of effort. Instead of playing games when I have ‘free’ time it’s now spent reading, writing, and preparing to change jobs. This has revived my passion for stories and writing in general. I did try to write two trashy young adult novels as a middle schooler but gave up because they were dumb and trashy. Now I have a full ten-chapter book planned with world building, character arcs, and historical research in effect. Already I’ve got the first chapter written with editing left to do. While it’s hard to focus sometimes journaling and lists keep me on-track. Not to say I’d left all this labor to my wife previously but now it’s a seamless single-person process to do it all and have it always done every day. I think what this really means is that these addictions I had were crutches I relied on when I needed to face the world but instead found a way to shield myself from it, in them.
At best this may be self-aggrandizing or at worst a self-indictment but by sharing I hope others can turn a critical eye to habits in their life and how those habits affect them both daily and over time. (If a certain Linkin Park song comes to mind while reading, yeah that’s intentional).
This past October my family came to visit and see my newborn daughter who was about three months at the time. While we did spend a lot of time around Zelda, my daughter, they needed some time outside of the house. My wife and I were, and still are, quite house bound as we navigate the difficulties of everyday life with a new little person to care for. Only just recently have we started going out to eat, something my wife really enjoys. In fact, the first time we took the baby to a restaurant was when we met my family at a local Mediterranean spot. All this to say is they needed to do their own things while here as we were/are boring.
My obvious game collection in the living room held a part of family history though, that being the Splinter Cell series on the Original Xbox. What makes this so important is that my father who’s avidly a non-gamer of any kind (board games, card games, etc…) seemed to gravitate to it and beat the first three in a couple of days each. For such a thing to happen, was for my young mind, something to boast. To this day these games are heralded as classic stealth games, requiring patience, awareness, and effective planning. If you don’t have any familiarity with stealth games, they often provide several approaches, violent vs. non-violent, seen vs. unseen. The hardest way to beat them is usually what’s called a ‘ghost’ run where you proceed all the way with zero enemy casualties and always unseen. My father beat all three almost entirely as a ‘ghost’. Not because the game asked him to but because that’s how he wanted to play the game. I don’t think I’d be able to do that personally even with years of gaming experience, and yet he comes in and does because that’s what was fun to him. Obviously, this made a strong impression when I was younger, so when I started collecting, I made sure they made it into my collection. I did so not only because of their status as stealth classics but because they were artifacts symbolizing a shared appreciation with my father.
Long segue aside while here he eventually decided to pop the first one in. Even though my setup to play original Xbox games on a modern HDTV hadn’t yet been tested I got it up and running with him five feet away from the screen due to short controller chord lengths. He knew he wasn’t going to beat it, but he wanted to experience it again. The game, Splinter Cell, is still impressive visually but shows its age in the more stilted control schemes of yore. Him being able to pop it in and experience that nostalgia is one of the reasons I have a collection. It’s a window into my past, his past, and gaming’s past. It’s certainly not a cornerstone of our relationship but to be able to bond over it then and now is a magical thing. This is what games have always been about for me. Experiencing something with others, sharing in that experience, and holding onto those memories formed through it. He played for maybe 90 minutes before he had his fill and that’s ok, it felt gratifying to me. As though my collection was finally fulfilling its purpose of sharing those memories.
Time seems to have lurched into hyperspeed overnight when I wasn’t paying attention. Every day blazes by. I wake between 5-8 AM and usually when I take my first deep breath for the day it’s 3 PM. My wife and I simultaneously wonder where indeed the time has flown to. This isn’t meant to be a complaint but rather a noting of how quickly a life shifts. This is all relevant because in what seems to be a blink my daughter is now three months old. It’s been a wonder watching her grow but I’m so close I don’t realize how much (physically) until the wife and I share pictures and see older ones. Recently I’ve been encouraging her to use her and hands and seeing her discover how to use them is not something that can be transcribed effectively. That’s how everything is with them (babies). It seems like magic or a miracle that they can develop so quickly. Yet how some things seem so beyond them despite it’s simplicity i.e. sleeping. I try to carry conversation with her while avoiding “baby talk” or pitching my voice higher to help her learn language and hearing her respond with her own onomatopoeic vocabulary shows how much she tries. Once while talking to her I looked at her face expecting fully formed english to come forth until I remembered “she can’t talk, she’s a baby”. You could say “wow this guy seems (out-of-it, dumb, etc… pick one)”, but you don’t witness their magical development first-hand. One day she struggles to lift her head, the next she’s pushing her whole body away from my chest so she can look around the room. And I swear when I say “hi” to her she already responds with a high pitched “ai” sound.
All this to say that despite feeling like time had been compressed it’s been a wondrous three months of fatherhood. As I write she’s screaming, cooing, and shrieking in her bouncer while listening to music, stopping to stare at me while I sing the parts I know. If you just got some incomprehensible warm feeling reading any of this know that parenthood is that feeling nearly all the time but also sleep-deprived, busy, and likely covered in spit-up formula all the time too.
I had recently suffered some muscle problems, likely from carrying the baby one-handed, rendering me ineffective at almost anything but lying prone groaning in pain. My wife picked up my slack but after a week put her foot down claiming things were untenable in their current state. Fortunately after several chiropractor visits and acupuncture I was able to start using my arm again. Then shortly after that my parents and younger sister came to visit us. We had about a week with them which also included my 30th birthday. It was a great time to work on spouse-parent relationships which can be difficult but are important especially when there’s grand-kids to consider. Roughly a week removed from their departure and the home is settling into a routine.
There’s so much that could be said. I could elaborate on my family’s visit, my favorite things about Zelda (my daughter), or how I confront the ever impending end of my life made ever-real by my changing of decades but there’s so much to say and too little time to ponder it.
My daughter is almost a month old now and there are times where it still doesn’t feel real. Like I’m not actually a father and there’s just this baby I’m taking care of for the moment. Even saying her name is weird. Just calling her Baby feels more normal as calling her by name makes it her real name, she’d never know what we’d named her if we just called her Baby. The bizarre feeling when I first said her name was like I was speaking her into existence, announcing her presence for all the gods and humanity to witness. But it felt heavy and came out soft and low. Good for a baby, better to soothe but if you’re exercising primordial magic it’s best to be more confident I think. My wife convinced me we needed a doula, one who speaks her native Mandarin, and so I’ve largely been unneeded. I’ve still got my nine-to-five as well so it all makes me feel so disconnected from being a father. When I have moments that I can steal with Zelda I do, keeping her tiny frame warm and engaging her with talk and the occasional reading (The Princess Bride). In the first three days I slept no more than a few hours while doing everything for Zelda and my wife but after the doula arrived the sudden separation of duties left me anxious and restless. I had left the safe and comfortable boundaries of youth and was creeping evermore into the responsibility of raising another person. Some memories of my youth still seem fresh and yet I’m expected to provide for her for the rest of (hopefully) my life. Daunting yes but I’m not scared of that. Before I can step into the full role of a parent I feel I should be more involved with Zelda day-to-day, moment-to-moment. My wife says I worry too much and it’s fine. She’s probably right though. The doula does create a real and obvious de-escalation of need as she’s able to do most everything herself. I think this causes two problems for me:
1. She’s spending time with Zelda that I don’t want to give up and performing responsibilities I think are mine
2. By not being able to fully step into my expected responsibilities as a parent I cannot fully become one.
This renders me stuck between the past and what’s next. The liminal space between being an adult and being a parent.
If any of this has you worried, it’s fine I’m past the point where this has pervaded my ponderings. So much so I wondered against writing about it at all, but no pain no gain. Logically though this all really shouldn’t matter:
1. The doula is only here for two months max, I have the rest of Zelda’s life to be a father.
2. I just have to get over it because I don’t really have a choice one way or the other. Plus I still have a job to do.
Any day now I’m going to come home from the hospital with a baby girl as a new father. I feel anxious, excited, afraid, curious, and more. For the moment I’m just double checking everything, trying to keep the house clean, and my wife happy. My wife is ready to no longer carry a watermelon-sized person around her belly also. This has been the largest reason I’ve not found the time or motivation to write much of anything. Even now the words come only with much focus and thought to wring out something. Anticipation has always had a way of staying under my skin, making me overwhelmingly anxious. For relief I always end up going over all the details, even the only mildly related ones. The nursery is setup, I’ve re-organized the garage, re-evaluated and sold off part of my video game collection, re-organized and cleaned the kitchen, and put some finishing touches into my gardens. I think I’m feeling the end of this chapter of my life and I’m trying to finish what I can so I can start the next as unburdened as possible.
I have so much going on and so much to say this will probably be quite long, especially with some pictures. So it’s been broken up into pieces, mostly for my benefit. If you’re asking why I didn’t release smaller posts over time, that’s a good question.
Going forward I may talk about Zelda, my daughter, but only after confirming it’s ok with my partner. We’re almost at 41 weeks and my wife is ready to be done. Fortunately Zelda is for all intents and purposes in good health despite her late stay. Unfortunately we’ll have to wait for our local hospital to deliver a few other Summer babies before we can schedule an induction and a definitive end. One way or the other within a week I’ll be able to hold my newborn. My wife is abuzz with the possibilities for Zelda, whether she’ll be good at math, a natural swimmer or anti-social like her dad. How quickly will she learn to crawl and speak? Will she be noisy or quiet? Active or still? All I can hope to do is comfort her against all the possibilities and assure her Zelda will be fine.
Ironically by the time this post goes live, my daughter will have been born already. On July 4th close to midnight Zelda was born with no complications, and all the struggles my wife suffered for the past 40+ weeks melted into one of the biggest smiles I’ve ever seen her wear when they handed her this tiny, quiet, little girl. Two days later and we’ve taken the baby home for the first time. Here’s to a healthy baby and wife *drinks more caffeine*.
The Wife
Wild salmon, fingerling potatoes, and green salad.
My wife has found the dwindling end of our non-parent life together pre-occupying her mind. As a balm I suggested a long list of ideas for “Dates”, with extra attention to her limitations in pregnancy. While we were unable to do all of them we did knock off quite a few and having this list to work through made planning a fun day quicker.
Dinner for two by candlelight
Bake desserts and make ice cream sundaes
Picnic
Work on some artwork together
Day trip to an interesting nearby city
Try a board game, card game, or video game
Faux camping in the backyard with smores and grilled food
Watch a movie at the Drive-in
Food crawl through a town
Dinner at a nice restaraunt
“Movie Theatre” at home
Pictured below we were able to complete a “Paint-by-numbers” on canvas that we are now deciding where to hang. Most likely in the nursery.
The final product of our collaboration.
The next we were able to do was try Anti-monopoly, a variation on the classic board game. It was the first time in a few years we had played a board game or anything like that together. On occasion she’s willing to play the video game Overcooked with me and it’s a bit of chaotic fun. We were also able to catch Everything Everywhere All at Once at a nearby Drive-in Theatre. We grabbed some mexican take-out and had a great time gorging and watching. Earlier in the year we had driven north to Napa, CA (the city not the county) where we roamed around taking in the sights and eating at a few places, this is the closest we got to a true food crawl. When I first moved out to California my wife and I were not married yet and were actually taking a break from each other. We eventually met for dinner at a nice local italian place and re-kindled our relationship that night. I was hoping we could go one last time before parenthood and we may still but it seems we won’t. Lastly my wife had received a small projector as a gift from work and with some tinkering I was able to setup our spare bedroom into a “home movie theatre”. The projection’s image is rather grainy but sharp enough for subtitles, a must for my wife. For our movie night I suggested The Grand Budapest Hotel, something we had meant to watch together for some time. This was my second viewing and her first. It’s a pretty fascinating movie with lots of stuff bubbling beneath the surface, she enjoyed it quite a bit so I’ve moved onto my next recommendation for her, Catch Me If You Can also a hit. Even though we worked through half the list we hit a point where we knew even amongst those limited options, our choices were fewer each day.
Just a funny aside, we have a local pizzeria that serves a “Prego” pizza. One that is claimed to help start labor, and my wife anxious to get things going advocated for it’s consumption. So I pickup what is essentially a combo pizza with extra onions, pepper, and linguisa added. She wasn’t a fan, she doesn’t like such “american” style pizzas so I’ve had pizza for lunch for almost a week now.
The Prego pizza
Myself
I’ve spent some time thinking about why I even have a blog and what purpose it serves. One conclusion is that being able to write about whatever I want with no real objective gives me the opportunity to organize my thoughts. Then in the writing of it I ask myself critical questions, which reveals more understanding. If nothing else having a place to speak even an empty room is conducive to my mental health and self-awareness. It’s my hope I’ll continue to think out loud and find more confidence in exposing more of my thoughts as I do so. Aside from my mental health I’ve taken a break from serious excercise to nurse a foot back into shape, but between an acceptable diet and limited activity I’ve lost another ten pounds in the past month. This makes 25+ pounds over two months. Down from 220+ to 195. The end of last month, June, was when I hit two months of no alcohol as well. Things are not perfect but I’m making the changes that I think are meaningful for now.
Video Games
Video game shelves
It’s weird that I feel so compelled to finalize things. Not only that but what I cared about or what mattered shifted quickly as the expected due date neared. This was most apparent with my intentions towards game collecting where I had streamlined my collection selling a good chunk of it. Cutting down on larger items like collectors editions and entire genres I’ve realized I just don’t like. Not only this but I bought plastic shells for all of my Nintendo paper game boxes as that finalized level of protection. In addition after a lot of shuffling around I’ve found a layout for my games that I find functionally effective and aesthetically pleasing. From the hookups for all my handhelds over on the left, to the ready-to-play PSOne between my genesis games, and everything else. I look at these shelves and see an interactive shrine to what gaming is to me. In an effort to make playing any of my consoles even easier I’ve started switching over to all wireless controllers. So far this covers the Genesis, SNES, and PS2 for the consoles that dont have first-party wireless controllers. So far it’s been pretty effective, I just need to document what combination of switches need to be activated for seamless component video out to my Retro-Tink 5x.
Vinyl
My vinyl setup
This push to tie the bow on my collecting also included my vinyl collection which saw two new additions with another three on the way. Most recently was The Black Dahlia Murder’s Ritual. I bought my first TBDM vinyl, Abyssmal a week or so before Trevor’s death and I had posted about not enjoying their recent music as much. I know I don’t have anything to do with what happened but it still left me with some guilt later. I only wish the best for those left behind. Continuing with the Death Metal I also picked up Black Crown Initiate‘s Song of the Crippled Bull and Selves We Cannot Forgive both excellent listens with a lot of variety, though I would like to say the former is more like one 21 minute long track that’s broken into four pieces. The latter goes to a lot of different places and most of the tracks have a clear identity picking only a few styles to blend each. The last Death Metal album is the newest release from Archspire who seem like a joke band because of how ridiculous some of what they do is, but every time I listen to their past two releases what I hear is some pretty great songwriting. Finally I was able to find an affordable copy of one my favorite 90’s east-coast hip-hop albums. It has this theme of a city bracing for a hurricane, the eponymous storm in the form of “Hurricane” Starang Wondah, Louieville Sluggah, and Top Dog.
For anyone curious about my setup, I’m using an AT-LP120XUSB so my audio is actually transmitted via bluetooth as I’m low on space for chords. At the moment I’m only outputting to a pair of decent Bose bookend speakers that’ve lasted me since High School. Given our house is mostly hardwood and vinyl planking the acoustics are exceptional and I can fill the whole house from downstairs at well less than half volume. My turntable accessories and stuff for cleaning are in the drawer just below the turntable, while replacement vinyl sleeves are on a shelf lower. My vinyl shelving was just some second-hand furntiure left by a friend of my wife’s. After having it for some time not knowing why this “book”shelf can’t hold books, it all clicked when I was looking where I could put my vinyl somewhere safe, accessible, and allowed for legible spines. I’m using some cheap metal bookends to keep the vinyl vertical and help with organization. Right now I have them organized into four sections Metal or Hip-Hop my wife doesn’t like on the top left, stuff I don’t listen to or damaged vinyl on the bottom left, video game soundtracks on the bottom right and everything else (jazz, rock, classical) is in the top right. Just for my vanity and because vinyl album covers are an art to themselves I bought a stand to display whatever’s playing.
At the end of part one I had left with the idea that the Gameboy Advance was the ultimate system for me as a young child, and while that’s true it’s also an era nearing its end. Once I had started middle school, I went to a different school than basically all the people I grew up with, so for my entire first year of middle school I didn’t really have many friends. Even on the school’s wrestling team I was the only 6th grader. The transition however left me very busy between school and wrestling. What little time I did have to myself I spent playing games as I had before, though by this time I had become more involved in playing PC games such as Warcraft III. In fact, I’d venture a guess that, even almost two decades later WC3, is still one of my most played games. It comes with a built-in tool that allow users to create their own content and so the WC3 servers were always bustling with new types of games or variations of older ones, making it endlessly playable. This was back when DOTA was new, and the terms ‘pwn’ or ‘own’ were just making it into online vernacular. I was getting older, my tastes were maturing, and my environments were changing.
Around this time my father, due to a fortunate turn at work could afford to buy a gaming console. Originally, he went to get a PS2 as he knew I wanted one but was talked into the just-released original Xbox by the Wal-Mart sales associate. While initially disappointed, as all I knew about the Xbox was some game called Halo a cousin really liked, I gave it a fair shot. The Xbox was my first “mature” gaming console . While older 16-bit games could be mature in nature like say Mortal Kombat it was less often they were thematically mature like Halo or Knights of the Old Republic. I went from playing Banjo-Kazooie on Saturday mornings to grinding through KotOR and Jet Set Radio Future. From family tournaments of Goldeneye to those of Halo. The original Xbox was a new frontier with a much vaster breadth and depth of content. My brother being much older was also aware of this other new thing called Xbox Live, an internet service that could allow people play games with each other remotely. We were able to convince our dad to run an ethernet cable from our modem box to the family room where the TV and Xbox were and after the purchase of some Xbox Live 6-month subscription cards my brother and I were ready to take Halo online. It was at this time when I came up with the name Ooglykraken, combining my love of mythology and an off-hand quote from DragonBall Z’s then running Majin Buu saga.
As I write this what I find most interesting in this reflection is how much I grew up alongside many of the technologies and ideas that are ubiquitous today. When they were new, I was still young enough to soak it up like a sponge no questions asked. Those who are younger would grow up with many of these things after they’d become commonplace. While those who are older will recognize they too went through formative experiences alongside tech growth that others then grew up with, unaware of it’ s own journey into ubiquity.
Moving into 7th grade was strange as everything in my life changed. That year I made friends with many people I call friend today, including one who would later be my college roommate of several years and then my best-man at my wedding. It’s during these times that a lot of people become more socially independent, making their own identities. So just as it was a time of abundant social development it also facilitated the kind of “school-yard” sharing. Word of mouth was still quite powerful for school kids despite the growing abundance of information online. It was through my new friends I found games like Devil May Cry, bands like Slipknot, and a broader exposure to anime. My brother had become independent around this time, so he moved out to his own apartment. This was the first time I’d had my own bedroom since I was a little kid and the freedom that came with it probably helped spur the growth of my atypical tastes, atypical relative to my family.
By the time I was in high school I had steady work landscaping and my age provided more personal freedom, so I was able to independently explore my own interests. Things such as being able to have my own TV, something rightfully prevented by my parents knowing I’d hole up in my room like a goblin emerging only to nab bits of food and then scurry back to my cave of a room. The light of a TV being the only signs something is living there. As far as gaming related changes, I traded in my GBA SP for a PSP. I was aware of the PSP but initially wrote it off. Then a friend of my brother’s gave me the whole spiel about modding, homebrew, and custom software. This was a whole new frontier. Emulation? Homebrew? Modding? All these unknown concepts revealed and demystified. First this meant I started learning how to emulate on the family PC, but also this convinced me of the PSP’s worth. I’ve never enjoyed selling games and consoles to get new ones but one website which made it more palatable was Estarland, an online storefront for games of all eras. After an appraisal of my collection from them I had just enough to get started with a PSP. I mailed in my old collection and anxiously awaited to be credited. Fast forward and I had a PSP and just like the GBA before it, it was immediately integral to my free time. Not only could the PSP play games, but it could store music, play movies, and more. Then it was quite novel but only a precursor of things to come. Now I did eventually try to mod my PSP but not ‘til later as at that time it was a risky procedure with the chance to brick the device or at the very least destroy the battery. So, I had to wait until I could afford a spare battery. My first try didn’t work, and I couldn’t keep on buying hardware for repeated attempts. Despite this, the little device made a lasting impact. There was a period of a few weeks after one of my friends got a PSP and Monster Hunter Freedom Unite that we put several hundred hours into the game. I don’t have that original PSP or anything else, but I remember my final hour total on the game to be somewhere around 600. What a waste of time, right? Maybe, but thinking back it’s all fond memories. In the end MH would be quite pivotal in refining my tastes and understanding of games.
Finally late in high school I was able to save up enough to buy an Xbox 360 which was just a solid evolution on the original Xbox. Thinking back, it’s funny thinking about how socially integral video games had started to become by that time with the popularity of games like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. High school became this time where if I wasn’t in wrestling practice or at school, I was at one or another friend’s house playing Borderlands, League of Legends, or fighting games like Street Fighter 4 and Marvel vs. Capcom 3. This was the explosion of multiplayer console games especially those of the online variety. My friends and I still tended to play in-person, however.
This period for me is one of my most nostalgic, being this combination of freedom and a lack of responsibility outside of school and wrestling. It wasn’t uncommon for me to spend almost my entire weekend at one friend or another’s. The whole time a heady slurry of weed, video games, Magic: The Gathering, Dungeons & Dragons, movies, and music. All my friends were within two miles walking so I could head over whenever I wanted to. In seven years, I went from innocent youth to a young person yearning for independence. I recognize to some degree my desire to play games as freely as I wanted (my parents had restrictions on time spent) helped foment a desire to live on my own. This is also what drove me to spend so much time at friends’ houses where such impositions didn’t exist for me. This is just one way my relationship with gaming affected the way I interacted with family, friends, and my responsibilities. The implication isn’t that games helped raise me either but rather they’ve had indelible impacts of varying magnitude on me. This exercise is meant to tease those impacts out and examine them, with special consideration for nostalgia and other long-term effects.
I started writing this blog to have a place to voice my thoughts and share with anyone who cares to visit. Despite the many ideas I wished to record I engaged in a habit that sapped me of my will, determination, and curiosity. That was habitual alcohol abuse. I chose this particular title because it got to a point where my wife recognized me as a different person when drunk. Angry and illogical I become a cruel shade of myself, trapped by my addiction and an inability to change. My Mister Hyde released after the imbibing of a potion. Any problems, troubles, or anything negative that I discuss in this story I provide not for pity but honesty. I made these mistakes, now I’m trying to fix what I can. I’m not the first and I will not be the last but maybe writing this will help me, and if you read it maybe it will help you or a loved one.
When the Covid-19 lockdowns started I had no problem staying at home. I prefer my solitude. However, as the lockdowns continued, I found myself growing increasingly bored and disappointed in myself. When my wife and I spent a portion of the year in Tennessee I started drinking a lot more. Partly because I had been a habitual pot smoker for about a decade and stopped all at once living somewhere where weed was illegal, and partly because of the boredom. It was simple at first, drinking a few beers after work while watching TV. Eventually it became habit and my consumption increased from a few beers to a six-pack. Not only that but being stuck where we were in Tennessee left me feeling trapped, like living in a hotel room for months. We went out when we could, but we were very remote. The only food available to us being microwaveable food as we didn’t have a kitchen. All of this and reduced exercise made me 50 pounds heavier after a few months. This all seems like text-book depression and maybe it was, but when I was high school, I suffered from a savage depression, and it didn’t feel the same. Eventually we left Tennessee and moved to Colorado, while here I picked up my smoking habit again but severely reduced in consumption. Recognizing how much weight I had put on I knew I couldn’t continue drinking beer and that I needed to be exercising daily. My misgivings over drinking had already started to exist but either out of indolence, foolishness, or addiction I continued to drink but now hard liquor. Of any of the signs my body gave me to stop the one that has changed my life the most it’s that my digestion stopped working properly though I hadn’t yet determined drinking as the cause.
Unfortunately, this is where the story takes a turn for the worse. My drinking had accelerated to a gallon of whiskey a week. I was occasionally day drinking, but certainly drinking far too much each night. This is when I started to lose control. When I started to argue with my wife. When she started to notice something was wrong. Too much alcohol and I can’t manage my emotions well, I start complaining about things to my wife. It becomes a debate. Then a fight, hurting us both. One could correctly guess this affected my wife’s disposition as well, quite severely. A tension had always existed between us as she’s highly motivated and hard-working, and when we met in College, I was struggling student who didn’t work as hard as he should or could have. After the alcohol she lost faith in me. She became afraid of me. Why didn’t I stop.
My wife had a hit breaking point with me and asked that I get into therapy. I met with a therapist for a few months but ultimately didn’t feel like it helped, and not for the first time. I had therapy as a high schooler when I was dealing with my depression. I attended several sessions back then but talking to my therapist I got the sense she either didn’t care or didn’t understand. She even suggested that my internal anger arose from contempt towards my mother because she and my older brother argued when he lived with us, based on me looking up to him as a kid. That’s absolutely a load of bollocks. I knew it wasn’t going to work with this therapist and I would have to figure it out on my own. Which I did, in a sense. One of my biggest inspirations back then was my French teacher at the time. This teacher really cared about her students and put a lot of effort into teaching. When I started to slip in grades, she’d talk to me about it because she wanted me to improve. She did all this while going through chemotherapy for cancer and she never lost her optimism. Not the overly bubbly kind but hopeful and determined. Knowing she’s probably suffering while doing all this it showed me that you must have hope and you must work hard every day to keep it that way.
Late in 2021 my wife and I discovered she had become pregnant. I had stopped smoking weed at this time in anticipation of my first-born, a daughter. This is also when I started studying seriously to change jobs and my first real attempt at managing my addiction. As a software engineer it’s required to demonstrate aptitude through a variety of tests and interviews. This means months of practice and studying. So, for three months I had purpose. Still drinking but I was too busy to drink a lot. For the first time since maybe college, I felt like I was working hard and had something. This was only a bright spot in a streak of darkness. I failed to get another job and I think the disappointment killed my remaining passion and optimism. Then I stopped studying and shortly after we moved back to California. My wife suggested it’s possible the constant moving prevented me from building solid habits.
I didn’t immediately relapse but I did start drinking again and it grew as a habit. Tensions with my wife, my own personal issues, a pull to change jobs, my day job, and most importantly my unborn daughter all weighed on me, asking me to find reprieve in a bottle. So, I did, and all that stress poured out of me whenever I drank too much. The pressure evolved into anger that I would direct at my wife when we disagreed, usually over my drinking. I never struck her, nor had I ever hit her, but the uncontrollable anger I exhibited frightened her. At least once she felt she should leave the house for her safety. Knowing if I want to be in my daughter’s life in a capacity that I would be proud of, I had to stop. I resolved to do so. Thus, this tragic tale of human foolishness reaches its present terminus (I apologize if I come across as pompous or anything of the sort).
My wife and I are trying to work through our shared problems. She’s suggested I see a therapist for my own issues. We’re also setting up time with a couple’s therapist. I’m looking into local AA chapters. Right now, the last bottle I drank is sitting on my desk empty with the date I began my abstinence “04-27-2022”. Hopefully in a year I’ll be writing about one year clean and how great it is to be a father.
Thanks to my family I never had a choice. Not like my parents were into games, but my brother and cousins were. For me this meant Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis games are amongst my oldest memories. Eventually my older brother got an N64 as a gift from the parents, back when it was state-of-the-art. I remember going to the store with them, my parents seeing the price tag and my brother negotiating its acquisition. It might not have been that day we got it but eventually it made it’s may into our house. Now we already had a Sega Genesis and I’d played every game we had though I still couldn’t read yet, but the 64 was something else. Between Super Mario 64, Mario Kart 64, Smash Bros, the Mario Parties, and most of all Goldeneye we were all enthralled. My cousins would come over and we’d play multiplayer for hours. Being the youngest I could never compete with them but it was all about the fun. Then came the crown jewls of my childhood: Banjo-Kazooie and then it’s sequel, Banjo-Tooie.
Bottom line the N64 was the most foundational of my gaming consoles and set the bar from what I’d expect from gaming. From multiplayer party games to enjoyable single player romps, with a personality I think is lacking in most modern games. It was another means to connect with other kids as well. Sharing on monday morning what we spent all weekend playing. In fact, some of my early favorites I was only able to find through friends such as Banjo-Tooie, Conker’s Bad Fur Day, Ocarina of Time, and Perfect Dark. Some may hate on the N64 today, but it still has a distinctive art style and well-made games despite its age. All in all, the idea is that old does not mean bad…. or good. There’s quality in every generation it just represents the different interests, aesthetics, and desires of the time. Maybe some other qualities too, please let me know.
The next step of my journey was when I started taking more autonomy over what I wanted. This began with my Gameboy Color. I’ve wracked my brain to determine where this magical little green device came from. However I can’t remember if I bought it or it was a gift but I do know it was second-hand.
This led me down the portable gaming rabbit hole, something my parents’ fondness for road trips would facilitate. Now if it sounds like I’m blaming my family that my wife now must deal with the childish question of “but what about my games?” (Imagine a whiny child voice) that’s not the case. As a person I’ve noticed I have a mild obsession with collecting and organizing but especially for things that are miniature. For example, as of this writing my GBA collection is my largest game stock with the second being the PS2. Once I became old enough to read labels I started experimenting buying new games for the N64 and GameBoy, starting my habit of making trips to the game store. Revelations like Pokemon Gold and Heroes of Might and Magic 2 began cracking open my awareness of what games could be.
My next glorious golden shining light from the heavens, something that had been teased before my eyes by others: the GameBoy Advance. I finally got one when I was old enough to do odd landscaping jobs for neighbors to fund my purchasing of toys and games. For the first time I would begin buying games brand new. Reading GameInformer artices eagerly anticipating their arrival then begging a parent to drive me to get a copy.
I remember buying this new.
This was the device that drove me to emulation and eventually to start collecting. Its abundance of high quality software of many genres meant it was always charged, always ready go, and always had something good ready to play. Competing with friends over the wireless dongles in Pokemon was like a precursor of modern multiplayer. Remakes of classic SNES games made some masterpieces portable, like Link to the Past. Even some great series received offerings on the GBA, like Final Fantasy Tactics or Metroid Fusion. I believe most young people who had this kind of Nintendo Power at their fingertips would have a hard time resisting it.
Thus a young one was struck with an inexorable curse, never to recover, forever doomed.
ooglykraken 