ReUnion.

December now, work is slowly closing up shop and I’m planning for a long sleep through January. Most of the years past I’ve kind of shut down and closed off myself to the world during the Christmas season. This year I’m going to try a bit harder and commit to the things that have kept me here.

This week I had the opportunity to watch one of the few YouTube Gaming channels I’ve subscribed to, the last time I’ve saw the Gaming Lawyer play was during the early days of his XCOM 2 playthrough. Like last week, I’ve been kind of hoping around streams and watched people play video games, not much of a stretch to see someone I subscribed to play within a small community. Recently I’ve found him playing the remastered edition of Skyrim. It’s truly been a long time, much like seeing a friend you haven’t seen in a long time. I remembered why I like streamers; not all, but the few of them out there.

The internet coming into this age has bear a lot of fruit. The one I’m fortunate to have is this media to share an experience almost realtime. As much as people want to be within the game, I sometimes want to be along for the ride. I remember when I use to play video games with my sibling, I would like to sometimes watch rather play. Something about watching turns it into a social activity; to talk strategy, to compete right next to your opponent. As much as those days are past, the old ways still apply. We still talk while we play games, we still get fed up at a difficulty situation, we still have someone sitting there watching us play.

I guess after a decade of playing video games, I forgot what it means to be a gamer. After tonight, I realize I should keep in touch.

Break’s Over.

Last week, I came back from my vacation. Honestly it was work related and I had to be away from my computer for two weeks. What was interesting was to rediscover my life when I returned. In my sanctum of my bedroom, writing room, sanctum of my inner thoughts and outer release, it describes my life and all my achievements within it.

No one and I mean no one has stepped into my room asides from myself. In this small cubicle with a curtained window, is a open panel computer; aging but holding on as clutter fills the space of my table. cables shunting data and power to a couple sockets in the walls. Creaky hardwood floors as my fan hums away as books and notes from a former life strewn across the top of this so called mess. Underneath are trickets poking out, a multitool, game controller, expired medications, a recently purchased watch. Surprising there is enough to place my phone to charge through my computer.

Behind the chair is a bed fit for one, not much for company but it’s a designated area where I sleep and keep warm in winter. As a guy, I own very little in shoes; a pair for work, casual for getting around, runners for the gym and semi-formal for job hunting. I have two backpacks, one filled with stuff from work and one with my camera gear which I recently purchased stowed within a camera bag itself. I don’t have a headboard but a small shelf sitting next to the door with boxes of games I bought long before Steam – collecting dust. CD’s I’ll never listen because I stream.

This room I consider mine is commandeered from it’s former purpose as a living room, so I have a couch. The couch like my desk is filled with clutter. Mostly everyday clothing I take and interchange from a pile. I do laundry on the regular but this pile is my week’s worth of clothing in a quick grab.

Coming home to this after staring at this for a decade is refreshing. It has given me the impression of the person of who I am from a third person perspective. What I see after a two week absence? Someone who is stuck holding on to the past while looking faithfully in the future. A person who wants to reach out but feels a bit of shame yet pride for all they have accomplished.

I am still here.

Mistakes

No matter who you are, you screwed up at one point or another. Whether you forgot to take an exam, broke your leg that time you jump off a building, or you go arrested for possession of marijuana when you were actually holding it for a friend; you got in trouble and you had to pay the price for your own stupidity. No matter what the case, “mistakes happen” said every teacher ever but they don’t tell you that being an adulthood, mistakes get you into really big trouble (at least 75% of the time).

As kids, we all got into trouble at some point to some degree. Most of the time, the worst we get would be a beating because back then there weren’t child abuse laws like there are now. So we got our asses literally handed by our parents for everything we did. If your parents didn’t beat you, then well done because either you were smart enough to get someone else beat or your parents didn’t care about you and you’re probably needing this weekly blog post more than me. When we were kids, consequences were consistent. It would be a slap on the wrist, being grounded, or for some, get hit. If you are fortunate, your parents would be the main source of your consequence. As you grow older everyone else, including you, will put out the pain. In high school, your consequences would include the most easiest of consequences but they would hurt physically or emotionally just like how your parents raised you. Low grades? Consequence for not learning. Not going to rehearsal to see a movie? Well you can kiss your shot at the talent show next spring goodbye. Accidently got someone/yourself pregnant? Congrats, you are now a parent. It would seem like the you are either screwing up pretty badly or just feel the world is never giving you a break.

As with growing up, things get more complicated and the consequences to your mistakes regardless of how small are now amplified. Why? Because society thinks being an adult is knowing everything. In reality, adults know nothing. Seriously, I know some people including myself; we still don’t know what we’re doing. We’re always getting into trouble either in our own little ways or after two decades of getting beat down, we’re finally learning to cover up for our mistakes. But even when we cover up our mistakes, being adult has it’s curveballs. Even if you cover up, it might come back to bite you back whether you learned your lesson or not. So to really enjoy adulthood as society places it, is to really never do anything wrong or against society itself. Discussion of fascism aside, I don’t think any of us can really be capable of never screwing up and usually if we do, we would either get in trouble personally or professionally. Legally would be the beating your parents gave when you were a child, but as an adult legal troubles are the worse because this can just ruin in one hit.

Though as badly as your parents, school or society puts it; we all get into trouble regardless of degree. You could be a millionaire having an affair or a teenage girl with an unfaithful love in your life. Just know before you realize it, everything is a mistake. Everything we do or experience is a mistake. Regardless whether we want it to happen or not, something started us along these path of choices and we travelled the best we can here. Even then, we will travel down the wrong path, make the wrong choices, even tried to go back and try again. Doesn’t necessarily make mistakes a bad thing to do, in fact mistakes can sometimes be the best thing that can happen. Getting into trouble for me usually taught me more than school, which is pretty irony but true. The choices I made that never panned provided me some perspective. School can tell you about experience and things that went on with the world and things that might help you with your job. There is no substitute to learning stuff on your own, even when you screw up you learn what would happen when you screw up.

We are not all perfect people, we don’t fit in to any description quite perfectly. We all make mistakes, the best we can do is learn from them and be comfortable with those mistakes because what you did with your life makes your life unique. People might scorn you for them after and you might get into more trouble, mistakes happen but they always happen. It’s not a bad thing, but it’s recommend to make mistakes. When you can do something wrong, sooner or later you will learn to do something right. That’s how evolution happened and parenthood happens because no one learned to evolved or became a parent, you learn from what you know and how badly you screwed up.

Until next time, screw up a little. You’ll live a little, maybe learn something from it.