Man, I really should come back around here more often. I promised to try and update this shit every week or so, but I've really slacked off on that promise. I honestly had no idea how troublesome, painful, and mind-boggingly intense buying a house is.
"Okay, here's a form that says that you won't rent the house your buying out to a homeless person, kill them, shit down their neck and dump their body in the back yard. And this form? This is the form that says you won't rent out the house to a homeless person, stab them and leave them for dead. It's kind of the same deal, but we couldn't put it on the same form as the killing, shitting, and dumping the body in the back yard form. Also, on that form, could you initial here? That's just saying that the excrement on the body an option."
In my mind, that's what all of these stupid forms are for. Shit like that. "Here, sign this form. This is to prove that we told you something; that you have options for your good faith estimate on how much shitting you will do." Really? Jesus Fucking Christ. Shoot me now.
But not only am I going through the anal raping and paperwork of buying a house, I'm also going through the teeth-pulling process of planning a wedding at the same time, a week or two after closing. The wedding won't be a hard thing to do at all mind you - it will in fact be the easiest two words I've ever had to say. The planning of the invitations, rehearsal dinner (which got scrapped by the way because the barbeque joint is closing down when the wedding happens), ceremony wording, music, decorations, and even planning down to what couple gets what room in the bed and breakfast is all just intense and laboring. I swear, after all this shit is over with, we're moved in and happily married, we're going to be uber-bored. Both of us. I mean, I don't think I'll be able to play a video game again without having to stop after I shoot a guys dick off and sign paperwork to go along with XxX-DaMan2003-XxX's death certificate. Or signing something when I get a good faith estimate from the Final Fantasy XIII's gil shops. "Here Lightning, sign this fucking form that says we offered you the price of 250 gil, but you do have the option to go down the linear path yet again to get it later for 200 gil. It's your choice, we just need to have you sign this saying you do have a choice."
I feel really bad for not updating my blog regularly. I really should. And during this process of all of this junk I need to do, I've come to the conclusion that I'm pretty much burned out on video game news writing. I'll fill you in.
After Loot Ninja shut down, I immediately thought I could transition over to another site and begin writing articles and news immediately. Man, was I wrong. I went ahead and sent out e-mails to a few sites I wanted to write for, and I did get accepted to this gaming site, but having to work from the bottom yet again, feeding the public fucking morsels of bullshit games no one cares about, it just wasn't worth it. I'm not even listed on the website as a contributor, and there is no telling when that will happen. Write for us, you won't be listed, and you'll basically be writing for free work.
But during this insanely busy time, it really got me thinking about just how important video games news is: not very. Sure, I enjoy reading morsels about my favorite games coming out, watching developer diaries, and gaining as much knowledge as I can about them, but for every one of those articles, there are 100 articles about bullshit Iphone or Facebook games I care nothing about.
How important is it that I write an article about some Google+ game called Crime City? Does it really matter to anyone in my demographic? Why am I wasting my time writing something for a site I care nothing about? That doesn't care about me? What about writing up an article with a few screenshots for Resistance 3? WHO. GIVES. A. LIVING. SHIT. There are millions of things out there in this world that are far more important than video games, yet, hardcore gamers pine and await every word from their favorite blogs.
In a way this is me growing up (just a little bit).
Now I'm not growing up completely. I still play video games, I still piss in the sink if Jen is using the bathroom, I still do all of the same things I used to do in my younger days. I just think my mentality and importance I put on video game news has changed. I think of it as me being finally able to care about the things I want to care about, write about the things I want to write about, and play the video games I want to play in my spare time.
It's almost as if I've had this job that everyone wants. Let's use a video game tester as an example. Who doesn't want to get paid money, snacks, and free energy drinks to play an awesome game before it comes out for hours on end? Awesome right! Well, just like mechanics and people who work on computers all day, as soon as you come home, the last thing you want to do is pick up a controller, work on your car, or sit behind a computer for the rest of the night. I focused on this one thing for so long, it started to take over my life. Everything I did was for the site, the podcast, or whatever. Now, don't get me wrong, I absolutely loved doing it, but at the same time there was so much more out there I was missing out on. I thought I didn't need a break, but I needed a slap in the face and a bigger break than I thought.
I haven't written an article for that website in over 2 months. The last one I did do was about new fucking screenshots for Final Fantasy XIII-2. At this point I am just seeing how long I can mooch off the site and get PR e-mails directed to my inbox. That's about it at this point. I've finally become burned out on video game news and writing it. I don't play video games anymore. I don't write video game news anymore, and I don't do a podcast about video games anymore. Having all of this cut off sends you into culture shock where you don't really know what to do with yourself. It's gotten to the point where I'll have an hour left to go before bed and think to myself, do I really want to pop in a game and invest energy and time in order to get frustrated and tired of it? Why do I want to get frustrated and then have trouble sleeping at night? How far will I actually get in that measly hour? Probably not that far, so why even turn it on?
With all of this going on, I have since picked up reading again. Before a year or two ago, I had only read one single solitary book since high school. I hated reading. I think this stems from me hating English class, and having to read really hard books for a teenager like Catcher in the Rye, To Kill A Mockingbird, and reading Shakespeare's MacBeth. It was one of my worst subjects in school, which is why I'm constantly baffled that I took up writing/blogging. All of those books or plays I mentioned are great don't get me wrong, but definitely not something a high school senior would read in his spare time if he had a choice. I'm wanting to read MAD magazine, Playboy, and watch skin-e-max on TV. If you DO want to read that heavy shit in your spare time as a teenager, you probably didn't know what a vagina looks like.
So fast forward to last year.
Jen and I went to Olivia Munn's book signing for Jen's birthday. She's a huge Olivia Munn fan. Loved her on Attack of the Show and still to this day reminds me that Candice is nothing like Olivia. That book signing was the seed that planted this whole reading thing into my brain. I'd look around and see stuff that somewhat interested me, but didn't set the hook. Later came my infatuation with the 1988 Permian Panthers and Friday Night Lights (the movie and the TV show, as well as Varsity Blues - which is very loosely based on the book). In comes H.G. Bissinger's book Friday Night Lights: A Town, A Team, and a Dream. This set me off on a journey into the written page. To know that there were actually books out there that interested me: the Star Wars universe, Mass Effect, Lonesome Dove, Dead Space, Micheal Crichton, Stephen King, and Larry McMurtry. Over the next couple of years, I've read a total of eleven books.
Now I know that doesn't seem like a whole lot - as right now I'm on track to make up for the one book a year I've supposed to have read since high school, but didn't - but to me that's a huge amount of books to cram into over the course of a year. The books I'm reading now is The Drawing of the Three from the Dark Tower series by Stephen King (it's book two). Everyone I've talked to that's either read them or heard about them thinks that these are the pinnacle of Stephen King writing. I'm not gonna say that at this point in time, as I'm still getting into the second book, but so far it's intriguing enough to keep me going. Let's leave it at that.
So before I ramble on more, I think that's about enough for today. I really just wanted to say that I've pretty much had it with writing bullshit video game articles no one cares about. I don't feel like working my way up again from nothing, and that there are far more important things in this world than a few new tidbits or screenshots about Shin-she Shin-she Warriors 7.
Re-think your priorities people. What on this earth will make you happy? And in the famous words of Adam Carolla: "If it doesn't make you happy or make you money, let it go."
