Category: Thoughts (Page 2 of 14)

If I’m going to celebrate anything about today, it’s the continuation of an experiment.

I’m working my way toward fifty years of age and I don’t have a lot of what one could call “patriotism” left. The country’s a mess, its ideals under attack from without and especially within, by the rich and the powerful and the willfully ignorant, by those who are gaming the system to the breaking point so they can win ongoing perpetual rule and control. But the ideals stated at the start of it all still mean something. Maybe I’m naive to hold onto that belief. So be it.

If I’m going to celebrate anything, it’s those ideals.

Not for the troops, because as soon as we decide that a uniform and a weapon automatically make a person superior then we have ceded a level of personal responsibility, but for the kind of people who choose to take up arms specifically for the cause of protecting those who cannot protect themselves. Not for the flag, because crass symbolism has become just another wedge to divide us, but for the kind of people who see the flag as a reminder of the importance of those naive ideals that started this whole grand experiment off in the first place. Not for the history, because boy howdy is this country’s history full of greed and corruption and outright evil swathed in lies meant to convey respectability and holy purpose, but for the future that I hope we still have the chance to make together, a more inclusive and honest and understanding future for everyone.

Not for independence, but for the hope of interdependence.

If a joke falls on the Internet, and nobody laughs, does it make a goddamned bit of difference?

It was suggested, years ago, that I rejected monogamy because I have issues with commitment. The fact that I’ve maintained two stable relationships for a dozen years or so now may put the lie to the intent of the statement, let’s be clear.

There may be a commitment problem in my mind, though. Just not the one some may have suggested. I’ve been thinking lately about how attached I get to the idea of finishing a thing, sticking with a thing, long past the point it stopped being fun.

Which is to say, I’ve been thinking about why it’s so hard for me to let go of TV shows and video games that aren’t fun anymore. I get too invested in the idea that I’m “supposed to” be watching a show for whatever reason (a friend got me started on it and I don’t want to seem disloyal, for instance). I feel like I’m letting the pixels on the screen down if I walk away from a silly little game.

For Uncle Pete’s sake, it’s games! It’s TV! It’s leisure-time crap! I should be able to walk away, cool as that guy walking away from the explosion without looking back. And yet, nope. I had a hard time removing a game from my tablet that had been actively pissing me off the last dozen times I played it.

(Sailor Moon Drops, for the curious, a game whose difficulty scale can best be summed up as “get lucky or spend money, loser.”)

The impetus for writing this post came this week as I tried for a second time to get into the Supergirl TV show. It’s cute, it’s quirky, it’s clever, the lead actors are very good! But… it triggers my embarrassment squick a lot and the first few episodes spend a lot of time setting up some kind of love-triangle-ish mess and I’m profoundly un-interested in watching that play out. Yet I think, “I should power through this, for the sake of all the stuff people tell me is good about the show!” But. Why? Why am I letting what I perceive as something other people might want me to do control what I actually do with my free time? I should be watching shows and playing games to relax, not as a required chore to meet some kind of social requirement.

Yep, that’s me in a nutshell: Stressing myself out over how I spend my leisure time by imagining what other people want/expect from me and trying to do what would make them most happy, when in fact nobody really cares if I do/don’t watch/play anything in particular.

It’s even worse with mobile games, since literally nobody cares if I grind for levels in Puzzle & Dragons or do my dailies in Future Fight, yet I feel bad about the idea of leaving my pixel-art monsters/heroes to wither and die, let alone taking care of my daily “friend”-transaction requirements. (To be fair, I’m still enjoying Future Fight. PAD, not as much.)

Play shouldn’t be work, dammit. What’s wrong with me?

Anyway. My new goal is to become stronger about choosing how I spend my downtime based on what is actually fun & fulfilling, not by how attached I am to virtual objects made of pure data. I can do this, right?

I realized something this morning: In a weird sort of way, I embody the warning not to drink and drive, as I do neither of those things.

(This could’ve been just a “tweet.” The other thing I realized this morning, however, is that I haven’t posted here in over a month. I have some new music reviews to tidy up in order to remedy the dearth of content…)