Ugh. Lightning storms, FTL. After frying my cable modem (and discovering those things are getting a little more expensive than I remember) I was kinda up shit creek without a paddle. Work has been ridiculously slow lately and money is not just falling into my lap. That will change in about two months, but until then...
In the meantime, I had to replace a $50 cable modem, buy $140 worth of contacts, replace two tires to the tune of $170, and the only reason I have been able to keep my head above water (as I'm playing the budget very close these days) is because I had just pulled the money for school out of my account. The fun repercussions of that is that they dropped three of my classes (due to low enrollment) and it is starting to look like I may not even graduate in February. It's sort of my own fault for not creating any kind of comfort buffer, but it's very hard to do that when I don't know if I'll come home from work that day with $50 or $100.
Then, Too Human, Rock Band 2, and Spore all come out within a month's period, and that's not even throwing the Live! Arcade stuff like Braid, Geometry Wars 2, and Castle Crashers in there. The only reason I could afford Too Human was because I finally broke down and traded all those dusty games on the shelf in. Sadly, I'm about this close to selling the Wii because it has not been turned on since I plugged it in back in March.
Which brings me to a strange place as a "Gamer". Scott handed me Freelancer and I played the fuck out of it (thanks to my Summer break) and I'm now doing the same with Too Human. Freelancer was not the greatest game of all time, but it was very entertaining and compelling. I would say the same of Too Human, but I'm about to run into the same problem I had 4 years ago with WOW. I want to play games in the evening with my friends, but to be able to afford those games (and the consoles/computers they run on) I have to work in the evenings. Part of the problem is that I have been jerking around with my life for 10 years, while my friends got 9-5 jobs (well... sort of, Scott...) that pay well. The sick irony is that when I had the 9-5 at Upstream, I was too busy with the GF to play with the buds at night.
But that's not even the half of it. Even if I graduate and stop having full-time school and a full-time job, I'm still not sure I'd pick up the games like I used to. Something about them is not as enticing as it used to be. I have since grown out of the "hype" phase of a gamer, where you buy every bit of excitement that's put in front of you, but even so, I miss the days when Guitar Hero hit and it blew my mind. When WOW and SWG were providing brand new game experiences that I had never even come close to having before.
When you add in the burning desire to socialize with girls, or even people my age (Sorry, Upstream, but I'm outgrowing you...), it starts to get difficult to figure out exactly what to do with my time. I end up running around trying to make sure I'm enjoying myself, without really being sure I'm enjoying myself. Meanwhile, I sit here in solitude (which I sorta like) and see the world through this luminous filter in my living room (and I do mean cable, but I don't mean TV). I remember spending this time playing video games, but things just don't feel the same way they used to. Did I overdose on games in my 20's? Have I simply cultivated a palate the is not satisfied with the simpler things games offer me these days? Aaron, you seem to enjoy things enough, so I doubt this is the case...
I ocassionaly see a corallary with strong drug use: that by exposing myself very heavily to a variety of intense gaming experiences, I have perhaps exhausted the receptors in my being that respond to the stimulus games used to provide. I fall back on games like Diablo II and Final Fantasy VII, but it's not the same--not like it used to be. I tell myself, "Diablo III looks really neat, and you should be excited for FF**" but I wonder if I really feel that way, or if I just want to feel that way.
Meanwhile, I have found that the really deep, thought provoking conversations I have with my closest friends (yes, that means you, Scott and Aaron) in the wee hours of the night are far more satiating than anything else I do in my recreation time. You add in a girl or two (if they are in the right mood...) and things can really get rolling. Am I nuts?
Oh yeah, and the title of this post: I finally succumbed to woot.com today and joined so I could buy this wicked shirt. An Asian dragon emblazoned on a circuit board? I think I just found my personal icon...
This also means my wallet is officially fucked, because I can no longer tell myself, "To buy that Woot, you would have to go through the trouble of registering, and you are waaaaay to lazy to do that..."
