All the Neutral Mornings

So I've kinda stopped playing the video games. This has become mostly a gaming blog over the past year, a trend that I regret. I still would like to end up a games writer some day, but ... part of me thinks that I'm just pouring more waste into the lake by writing yet another game review.

Jenn Frank and her blog, Infinite Lives - well, I have an uncomfortable affection towards both. She wrote a post, "Dementia, video games, and the end of the beginning." Reading it wasn't really an epiphany, but it evoked something for me.

I used to sit in my basement, for more hours than I can describe without ending up in Hyperbole Heights, playing emulated SNES games on my Pentium 133. In the summer, it was nice and cool in the basement, my refuge from heat, people, and whatever housework I'd get snared into wandering the visible spectrum of my home. Thinking about it now, I get uneasy. There's an instinct in all of us to defend our hobby, but it doesn't seem like it was an awfully healthy way to spend the time.

One day while in my basement, I caught the amalgamated scent of summer in the air, and I felt the foolishness of playing Earthbound for the third time while all these beautiful smells passed me by. So I decided to renounce video games. My memory's pretty vague, but I don't think I lasted a week. It wasn't a noble effort; my end goal was normalcy. I wanted to wash that geek right out of my hair, and I didn't realize how difficult it is to abjure one's identity.

So I've kinda stopped playing the video games. I feel hypocritical for rejoicing.