Why I’m Still Writing about Video Games
It’s been an… eventful… few weeks. Marches, Executive Orders, Immigration, Appointees, Protests, Alternative Facts — its impossible to be on the internet, particularly social media, without being bombarded with current events. People are angry. People are disheartened. People are worried.
I’ve spent a few weeks thinking long and hard about the place gaming has in our society at this particular moment. Lately its been hard to know exactly how to start this year’s game reviews and opinion. Its hard not to feel like talking about games while so many important issues are being discussed, debated, and decided isn’t somehow petty. Its hard not to feel like the time I’m playing couldn’t be spend doing something more productive.
My decision came in the form of two aha moments just a few days apart. Firstly, a friend of mine is struggling to handle work, home life, and activism — she was having a little crisis moment while trying to do EVERYTHING. This resonated with me. For a little while after my divorce I tried to be super mom. Socialization dates, class schedules, lessons, enrichment trips, you name it. Coupled with working and trying to manage a household alone I was scraping the bottom of the barrel pretty quick. A much wiser, older woman at work found me trying to thread a sewing machine backwards while half asleep one afternoon. “Honey,” she said, “you can’t get water from a dry well. You have to fill yourself before you can give to your babies.” She was right. In order to give of ourselves, we have to fill up. Doing everything will dry your well, doing everything you can then taking time to fill up keeps you in for the long haul.
My second “aha” was based on a simple social media thread by another friend. The original post posed a question about the things that made life worth living. Art, friends, laughter, games, relaxing were all mentioned — many of the things that we’ve felt were being eroded by the need to do something 24/7. The upshot? If we spend every single second of the next 4, 8, 20+ years fighting then we’ve lost sight of what we’re fighting for. I not only want to the right to go anywhere and do anything with my friends (whether we’re black, brown, straight, gay, Middle Eastern, Asian, etc.), I want be able to enjoy that time spent. The two aren’t mutually exclusive, and we aren’t being small minded when we take some time to enjoy life. Actually, we’re showing that in spite of racism, bigotry, and a lot of angry, scared people we will not just persevere, we will THRIVE. We will live and love and laugh.
I can’t promise that occasionally the tone won’t seem a little more serious here. I also can’t promise that I’m not going to be goofy as hell sometimes. Every day I’m going out to help my community. And then I’m coming home, throwing on some sweatpants and playing as a pirate, or a chameleon, or a space explorer for a couple hours. Because what makes our country great is the freedom to do whatever you want, and I’ll stand up for that every second, even if sometimes it means I’m holding a controller when I do.
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