Yes, that’s me, in case you’re wondering. Well technically it’s a picture of me. I’m not trapped in your whatever the hell you’re reading this on. The picture in question was taken by the absolutely horriderful webcam in the amazingerrible Lenovo IdeaPad s340 that I bought from Costco for $399, which was such a better decision than buying a new ThinkPad for $1500+ that I can’t even get over how great I feel about it. Especially since I got fired and the gravy train is just about up to the station.
Where was I? Oh yes another blog entry. This is a fun one.
Did I ever tell you about the greatest video game I ever played? Stick with me here, even you chads, because it’s not as bad as it sounds.
The best game I ever played was Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.
Why? You ask. Welp. It was 2004. I was 34 years old and didn’t know nothing about games except that I was a Nintendo fan and like Zelda OK. Wind Waker was my recent favorite of those and nothing would dethrone it.
Then I got myself a trusty little Playstation 2 to replace my aging GameCube and played the flagship there – San Andreas.
(Please I know how excruciatingly boring this is to a grownup – I am going somewhere with this.)
San Andreas started out pretty straightforward. You did missions, you got some experience, etc. I barely even remember – except for one thing. It got to a point where you had to reclaim neighborhoods in LA for your particular gang – you were green. Your enemy gang was purple. You’d go into a section of town, trigger a gang war and then fight off the purples to turn that little part of the map green. Lather, rinse, repeat.
I got used to this, and good at it, and was turning a lot of purple into green until finally there was this mission I had to go to. It was a drug deal. And it went south. And then something happened that had never happened in any game I’d played up until that point – there was a plot twist. The deal went south. I was betrayed by my friend. I had to escape. The entire map turned purple and I found myself in the middle of the woods, at night, in the rain, running for my life with nothing but the tank top on my back.
That was the real beginning of the game. And that blew my stunted 34-year-old mind.
So. What the hell does this have to do with anyone who’s 50 and just got laid off? Well. I would say only this. As I went through life, fairly successful by many standards (but an abject failure by other standards – more blogs on that to come down the line) I developed a little notion in my mind that life itself was kind of a game. Something that fits rather well with simulation theory and the like. And when I had to do something, whether it was pick up my kid’s prescription or fix a hole in the wall or whatever, I’d think of it kind of like a side quest in a game and –
Man is this boring. Here’s the upshot: life IS a game. You might as well think of it that way. That doesn’t mean you get an extra guy or you should go out and pillage the neighborhood or do all the crazy things – you can’t push reset. But you should consider that all the consequences of things are mostly in your head. You don’t know what’s going to happen so you might as well enjoy it. Thinking of life as a game lowers the stakes a little bit.
And believe me. When you find yourself in the middle of the woods, wearing nothing but a tank top and it starts to rain and you just keep seeing that image of your neighborhood turning purple in your mind – lowered stakes can definitely keep you looking up through the trees rather than down at the mud.
PS I know I mentioned Animal Crossing. That’s a fascinating game as well. Happens in real-time and you have a mortgage and a ton of other things. My wife and I played it pretty regularly until we got a real mortgage and a real life and realized – yeah. Life is better.
Peace out.
Later.