My last post, Less Useful Than a Paperclip, has been deleted as it goes against the ethos of my intentions. I do suffer from depression and nihilism but I do not want to spread it, when I write I just want to spread understanding and hopefully good will. While finding my divorce was finalized has hurt me deeply I do not want negativity to pervade. It really sucks and I miss my ex-wife and daughter but that’s life, as Mr. Sinatra said. Life is not an easy undertaking but we all have our own cards to play and recently I’ve been misplaying mine and blaming the game. There is so much happiness and good to find, for most of us. It’d be disingenuous to constantly be so negative. For all of the pain and misery one finds in life there certainly is joy and happiness. I know not all people are as lucky as I am, I was born to a middle-class american family but striving for something better can avail something to everyone Srinivasa for example.
I’m choosing to write today because my last post is the least of what I want. I hope when you read my writing you connect to me in some small way and I do not want you to connect to my negativity. What I want is for all the world to be a good place, full of life and happiness. I’m naive so it is my nature. To not-so-subtly get to the point I apologize for giving in to my despair. Instead I started a Youtube Channel where I will be posting all child-friendly content. Mostly reading books and when I finish those doing puzzles and other similar content. If you’ve read a lot of my blog you know I have a drinking problem and other related issues but I will not allow that to bleed out into anything related to children. I have my failings but children deserve the best of us, and that is only what I will give them.
I hope whoever reads this has a great rest of their day.
(This was something I meant to publish in October but felt it was a little too depressing to riff off of the ‘horror’ tide around Halloween.)
While not of the gory variety there is an existential horror within the dying embers of old friendships. Expicitly none of my friendships are truly dead but it’s hard to ignore how thin some have become. At no point am I blaming or pointing fingers, if nothing else my awareness of this state but lack of long-form action could justify blame levied at me; but blame doesn’t shift reality.
Before I knew I’d be a father I agreed to be a best man at a friend’s wedding. I think the exact words were “I’d be honored.”. Later as the date approached I had to call and let him know I couldn’t make it as I’d be taking care of a baby then. In between those two conversations we hadn’t chatted once and I was telling him I wouldn’t make it and that I would soon be a father at the same time. He’s a chill guy and seemingly wasn’t bothered by the change in circumstances.
Obviously my communication skills aren’t that great but there’s more to it than that. We’ve been friends since middle school but went to different colleges and while he stayed in Indiana I moved to California. We even both became software engineers, but given our differing choice in college we developed new social groups. There is a stereotype that once you get married or have kids you can’t have friends, and maybe there is some truth there. However I’d guess the truth is much closer to: as people go through life they have evolving circumstances that influence their availability, ability, and willingness to engage. For example after I moved to California and got a good job my ability to visit family increased as I made more money but my availability decreased since I didn’t have many paid vacation days. If this is true then the “death” of my friendships isn’t as much my fault as it is consequence of living my life, making it all the more tragic.
Pushing past the bleakness there’s a couple more things of interest. Though the relationship may feel tenuous you’re still friends just not as close as you used to be. So, again, it’s not a true “death” but the extreme awareness in disparity between then and now. I’m sure if I reached out to my friends we could chat, catch-up, maybe play some games and have a great time. The friendship still exists.
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).
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.
Perhaps most kids who grew up enjoying games like I did also dreamed they would one day own as many games as they wanted. The proverbial “Kid in the Candy Shop” being able to walk away with everything. Well I certainly did and everytime I felt I had to sell off older games for newer ones that idea was given more fuel. Learning about emulation was a revelation and provided an accessible gateway but it’s alway felt off, not properly scratching that itch. Don’t get me wrong I think emulation is and will be a cornerstone of game preservation, but the disconnect from the physical process makes it feel hollow to me. I missed sliding a cart in, clicking an on switch and gripping a distinctive controller in my hands. Even just picking out what to play, the little game in your head to decide. There’s a ritual to it that adds to the experience, but for me even the feel of the controller is important. Playing Sega Genesis games requires the Genesis controller with it’s big, clicky buttons that make arcady games oh-so satisfying. Or even as simple as Super Mario Bros. on NES with buttons locations helping inform the gameplay. Nowadays it’s easy to get 3rd-party controllers for PC to imitate older controller designs which is also great. With just a decent PC you could emulate almost everything but more recent generation consoles while using faithful controllers. For me, clicking through an emulator menu just can’t replace grabbing something off of a shelf and physically turning on a system.
With my first full-time job I had finally achieved I decided to try and satisfy that childhood dream of owning any game I wanted. It all started when I had my recurring urge to play my favorite GBA games. Instead of emulating like I had since high school I bought a GBA SP and a few games. Then it dawned on me I could do more. I moved onto the N64, then a PS2, and more. I started keeping track of what I wanted in a spreadsheet as the possibilities opened up. Then the spreadsheet kept track of everything I had as the collection grew. After some more research you realize there’s better ways to get faithful HDMI signals with upscalers like the Framemeister. You can also use different types of cables for better signals. Signal switches can make using multiple consoles easier. If you have friends who’ll play you’ll want multiple controllers for the different consoles. But what about cleaning, maintaining and moving your collection. Discs and cartridges each require different cleaning solutions. Disc based consoles have internal or external memory units while cartridge games often have in-cart memory that requires replacing batteries on the board. Older consoles die, newer consoles fail. Discs will face rot. You want to move? How do you package and safely move all of it? Where does all of this go in your home after? You’ll need shelves, boxes, labels, or something. It’s expensive. It’s never ending. What was once a glorious childhood dream is now a burden that makes you question your adulthood.
Collecting quickly became a game unto itself. Finding recommendations to look out for, finding random picks wherever I may roam, the “it’s my birthday, so it’s ok if I buy a Model 1 Genesis in box”. Completing my list and adding new items to the shelf became more gratifying sometimes than some games. Same with upgrades to my media center. I’d update some things to improve accessibilty, flow, or usability but never access or use them. So not only do I have a bunch of fragile, non-liquid assets taking up a large amount of physical space, I felt guilty for not playing what I had, continuing to buy more, and not playing them.
Not mine, way too many 360 games.
Over time I’ve come to terms with my relationship with my collection. Even if I don’t engage with it as much as I think I should that doesn’t mean I won’t or can’t. In fact the point is that I do have them for whenever I may want to play them, not to play them all right now. Sometimes you have to be in the right mood for a particular experience or take a chance to experience a new one. In the end the boundaries and expectations are yours to control, you just have to be honest with yourself and wise enough to know when you’ve gone too far. It’s your collection, you decide. For me, just because I don’t play Super Nintendo every day doesn’t mean I should sell off my copy of Tetris Attack.
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.
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 